Fun with Christmas Carols
by Isabel5
Summary: Chloe/Oliver. Just a few little vinettes of Chloe and Oliver's Christmas' over the years. Each chapter is inspired by a different Christmas Carol. Written for the Chlolliday Challange.
1. Baby It's Cold Outside

Chloe turned off the faucet and pulled the wet rubber gloves from her fingers with only a slight degree of difficulty. She turned on the dishwasher, wiped down the countertops then ventured out into the living room to see what else needed to be done. "Oliver?" She called out when she didn't see him. The tree lights were twinkling but they didn't allow her to see far into the room. The fire was still going strong in the fireplace but that too let off only a small amount of light. "The dishes are done." She called out, a yawn distorting the end of the sentence. "The kitchens' clean, and I'm exhausted." He didn't answer her still and she could see no sign of him.

He'd been put in charge of cleaning up the living room and from the amount of glasses, empty beer cans and wadded up napkins lying around, he hadn't gotten very far. "I swear to God Oliver if you're asleep I'm going to kill you." She grumbled walking around the couch, only to trip on his feet and land heavily on top of him.

"Ouch." Chloe complained into his neck.

"Sorry." He mumbled, his voice as tired as hers.

She lifted herself up so that she was staring down at him. "What the hell Oliver?"

"I was getting a beer bottle that rolled under the couch, and I looked up for some reason and I noticed…" He pointed up. "There is a canapé stuck to the ceiling." There was a note of hysteria in his voice as his hand fell back down to his side. Chloe rolled off him and onto her back to stare up, sure enough, hanging precariously, stuck to the ceiling was indeed one of the potato blinis with smoked salmon and caviar.

Chloe couldn't help it as the laughter bubbled up and then came out in a very undignified burst. It didn't matter though because soon Oliver had followed suit and they couldn't have stopped if they'd tried.

They'd been up for almost forty eight hours straight at this point. A last minute trip to Istanbul a few days before Christmas to check out a lab had gotten them back in town only two hours before Oliver's annual Christmas Eve bash. It was two in the morning now and it was definitely catching up to them. The guys had all ventured off to guest rooms and passed out much much earlier, as they were not required to host and mingle for the party goers. Technically neither was Chloe but a previous attempt at sneaking out the door at half past eight was thwarted by Oliver with a grab for her wrist and an urgently whispered, "If you so much as think of leaving me here to deal with all of this myself I will take back every piece of computing equipment I've ever given you and that includes your precious laptop".

Needless to say she diligently stuck to his side for the rest of the party. And because that's just the type of person she was, she couldn't leave him to clean up the mess himself. "They're twenty foot ceilings." Oliver complained. "How did it even get up there?"

Chloe turned her head to face him, her laughter dying as she caught her breath. "Oliver I found a pair of frilly pink underwear stuffed in the bottom of your dishwasher, I'm currently worried I'll never be able to eat in your kitchen again and you're worried about one canapé?"

"It's on the ceiling." He turned to her and said it more slowly this time as if that would help her understand the extreme gravity of this situation. "How am I even supposed to get it down? Do they make ladders that tall?" He whispered to himself and Chloe realized it was entirely possible that on top of the sleep deprivation he was a little drunk.

Chloe just smiled and pulled herself to her feet. She grabbed a wadded up napkin off the coffee table, looked up at the canapé, took aim and threw it. It sailed a few feet in the air and then fell back down, barely making it over Chloe's head.

"It was to light." Oliver pulled himself to his feet and grabbed a pillow off the couch, tossing it above his head. It went substantially higher than the wadded up napkin but still not high enough.

Chloe reached over for her own pillow and instead, came back with a pair of boxers in her hand that had a big bow right on the crotch. "Seriously, was everyone just having sex at this party in plain sight and if so how did I miss it and how do they not miss their underwear?"

"Those could be mine." Oliver pointed out.

"You would never be this cheesy." Chloe pointed to the bow that she supposed indicated that the contents of the boxers were in some way a present for some lucky girl to "unwrap". "Besides, you don't wear boxer's. You wear boxer briefs."

"How do you know that?" Oliver asked her surprised.

"I've tended to a lot of your battle wounds Oliver. Sometimes that requires me to have you pantsless." She reminded him.

"Have you seen me…you know…" He motioned to his body.

"What?" Chloe asked confused.

"Naked?" He almost blushed when he said it and Chloe found that to be ridiculously endearing.

"Thankfully that has yet to be necessary." She rolled her eyes, the snark in her tone helping only slightly to ease the heat she could feel rising in her face at the image of Oliver completely naked. She discarded the boxers to grab a pillow. They tried with the pillows for a few more minutes before realizing they weren't going to make it all the way to the ceiling either. Chloe dropped her pillow to the ground and sighed.

"Well." Oliver groaned, giving up on his pillow as well. "We've got to give you something to look forward to."

"Ok." Chloe glared, picking up the boxers and tossing them in his face. "I take it back, you are that cheesy." She stopped with a sudden thought then put a hand on Oliver's shoulder, leaned down, slipped off one of her shoes and threw it over her head.

"Oh that's a good idea." Oliver smiled. "Give me your other shoe."

"You have two of your own shoes, use one of them."

"But you already have one shoe off and yours are less expensive."

She turned and looked at him, raising one eyebrow. "Wanna bet." She smiled but slipped her other shoe off and tossed it to him anyway.

"Your shoes cost more than five hundred dollars?" Oliver asked astonished as he tossed the strappy sandal in the air. Chloe just snorted and that's when Oliver noticed the red sole on the bottom of the shoe. Even as a guy he knew what that meant. "I'm paying you too much."

"It's my one vice." She shrugged.

"Lie." Oliver called her out. "You once told me that coffee was your one vice, and another time that tech was your one vice."

"Well coffee costs five bucks a cup and you buy me all my tech so it's my one expensive vice." Chloe joked.

They threw the shoes for a few more minutes until Oliver reared back and just let it rip. They both stared in astonishment at the ceiling, where an inch from the canapé the heel of Chloe's shoe managed to stick itself through the drywall and stay there. "Huh." Oliver said.

"You're so buying me another pair of those." Chloe told him.

"Technically, I bought the first pair." Oliver reminded her.

"Well this is true." Chloe shrugged and then collapsed on the couch in a heap.

"The impact didn't even shake it a bit." Oliver shook his head in astonishment as he sat down next to Chloe.

"Which is making me regret the four that I scarfed down earlier." Chloe laughed and held her stomach. "Did the caterers put glue in that thing?" Chloe played with the strap on her remaining shoe for a while, just sitting next to Oliver, enjoying the warmth of the fire. "I should probably get going." Chloe grunted but made no move to leave her comfortably warm spot on the couch.

"Sleep in the guest room." Oliver looked up in the direction of the second floor. "That is if there are any left."

Chloe shook her head. "I really can't stay."

"But it's cold outside." Oliver pointed out to her.

"I've got to go." Chloe insisted.

"It's cold outside." Oliver said again but Chloe didn't waver. He pulled himself up and walked to the bookshelf grabbing a bottle "Look, I've got a fire and one last bottle of Comtes Rose. That a $300 champagne and it's going to go to waste." He shook the bottle at her hopefully and she smiled.

"Maybe just a half a drink more." Chloe shrugged.

"You put on some music, I'll find us some glasses." Oliver walked to the kitchen as Chloe pulled herself to the stereo. She found Oliver's Christmas playlist and hit shuffle then settled back in the couch, taking over the spot Oliver had been in before because it was closer to the fire and warmer. She curled her feet under her and sighed contentedly. Her eyes drifted closed and her breathing started to even out and she was just on the verge of falling asleep when she was jarred awake by Oliver plopping down next to her. "I could find any glasses."

"There are stacks of them on the bar in the kitchen." Chloe opened her eyes to look at him. "I know, I washed them all."

"Ok, I didn't feel like carrying them in here." Oliver shrugged. "It's just us, I think we can get away with drinking from the bottle." To illustrate his point he took a long swig and then passed it to Chloe who looked at it dubiously.

"You're not sick are you?" Chloe tentatively reached out and took the bottle from him.

"Are you afraid of my cooties?" Oliver teased her.

"No." Chloe scoffed. "I'm afraid of your disgusting dirty nasty exotic boy germs." Chloe said pointedly before taking a long drink from the bottle. "You should be too. I'm insufferable when sick."

"Somehow I don't find that hard to believe." Oliver took the bottle back and sipped again as Chloe elbowed him in the stomach. "You took my spot."

"It was warmer than my spot." Chloe smiled at him and he smiled back and suddenly the entire room felt…hotter. "I really should go." Chloe swallowed breaking Oliver's gaze.

"Ten more minutes." He coughed. "Then I'll drive you home."

"You don't have to do that." Chloe shook her head. "I'll walk."

"You only have one shoe." Oliver pointed out.

"Oh right." Chloe frowned looking down at her stocking clad feet.

"And no coat." He reminded her. They'd come straight to Oliver's from the airport and she'd sent Bart to her house to pick up the dress and the shoes but didn't think to ask him to get her coat. "I don't really need a coat." She shrugged.

"Look out the window at the storm." Oliver nodded behind her and she turned around. At some point in the evening it had started snowing, hard.

"Well maybe just a half a drink more." Chloe grabbed the bottle of champagne back and took a long gulp.

"I don't think Metropolis has ever had such a blizzard before." Oliver pointed out. "There's no way I can send you out in that."

"I can't have you drive me though. You've been drinking." Chloe reminded him. "Drinking and snow is not a good combination. I'll just catch a cab."

"No cabs to be had out there I bet." Oliver sighed contently and leaned further back into the sofa. "Besides, you go out in that and you will catch something. Imagine my lifelong sorrow if you caught pneumonia and died."

"I didn't know you cared." Chloe leaned her head against the back of the sofa and smiled at him.

"Of course I care." Oliver reached out a hand to brush back a stray curl that managed to escape from Chloe's complicated up do. His hand froze on her cheek. "With the fire reflected in them, your eyes are like starlight now." He said entranced.

_He's going to kiss me._ The thought popped into Chloe's head unbidden but as soon as she thought it she knew it was true. They'd sort of been dancing around this strange flirtation for a few months now. It started one evening over the comms during a mission, bantering back and forth which was really quite normal but then Oliver had changed the rules and continued it when he'd gotten home.

Since then Chloe knew they had been balancing on that fine line between just friends and something more. Both of them were too scared to make that final jump however, worried about what it would do to their relationship, what it would do to the team. "I ought to say no to you." Chloe mumbled and then realized she said it out loud.

It didn't faze Oliver though. "Mind if I move in closer?"

Chloe just smiled. "At least I'm gonna say that I tried." She whispered, his lips so very closer to hers now.

"What's the sense in hurting my pride?" He mumbled before kissing her softly. When he pulled away it took Chloe a minute to open her eyes.

"I really can't stay." She said, preempting any offer Oliver might make.

"But it's cold outside." He gave her the excuse before kissing her again.

"Lois is waiting for me." Chloe mumbled against his lips. "And if I don't come home then there's bound to be talk tomorrow, especially if I stay here."

"Say you were exhausted, you fell asleep, it happens." Oliver had moved to the corner of her mouth now, slowly making his way across to her neck.

"At the least they'll be plenty implied." Chloe said but her resolve was wavering. She pulled away and grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at her. "I really can't stay." He just smiled and tilted his head, grabbing her hand and intertwining their fingers. He placed a velvet soft kiss to her knuckles and she melted. "Screw it, Lois will understand. It is cold outside." She mumbled before leaning forward to kiss him again.

After a few minutes of soft, lazy kisses Chloe found herself lying across Oliver's chest on the couch, his hand rubbing up and down her back, lulling her to sleep. If they stayed there much longer, there was no way she would make it to the bedroom. The music had turned itself off at this point and somewhere in the distance she heard church bells ring out the hour. "Merry Christmas." Oliver whispered in her ear as he placed a feather light kiss to her temple. His voice rumbled through his chest and the vibrations just slid Chloe further toward sleep.

"Mebrry Chripbnass." Chloe mumbled sleepily into Oliver's chest but he understood the gist of it.

Chloe could feel sleep, it was right around the corner, it was close enough to touch, and that's when they heard the crash. They both scrambled to sit up and looked over the back of the couch to see Chloe's shoe standing up perfectly straight in the middle of the floor. It must have fallen out of the ceiling.

"Hey looks like I don't have to buy you a new pair after all." Oliver smiled. A second later, with a surprisingly loud sucking noise the canapé followed the shoe to the ground, landing inside of it and sliding down the sole to settle in the toe of the shoe, spilling caviar and smashing cream cheese and salmon right into the leather. Chloe turned and glared at him. "So size five?"

"Five and half." She smirked and kissed his nose before pulling herself to her feet.

"Wait, where are you going?" He asked staring after her. His eyelids were drooping with too much champagne and the desperate desire for sleep and his hair was deliciously tousled and Chloe sent a silent thanks to God or Santa or whoever was responsible for bringing him into her life.

"I'd rather not sleep on the couch all night." She said reaching out for his hand and pulled him to his feet. "Come on, be a gentleman and take a girl to bed."

"Oh if I'm taking you to bed, the last thing I plan on being is a gentleman." Oliver said as she dragged him across the room to the stairs.

"That's pretty big talk coming from a man who can barely stand up on his own two feet at the moment." Chloe laughed as Oliver leaned heavily on the banister, pulling himself toward the bedroom.

"Oh, for what I'm planning I don't need to be able to stand." Oliver smirked and then stopped in the doorway, a slow easy smile growing on his face. "Although that can be fun too." He winked and Chloe laughed but blushed none the less.

"Let's take this one step a time Casanova." Chloe pulled him in the room and shoved him to the mattress, pulling off his shoes and then his pants.

"I like it when you take charge." Oliver looked at her through heavily lidded eyes, grabbing her arms and pulling her down on top of him and kissing her softly. "Are you going to stay?" He asked, hope and fear in his voice.

"Yeah I'm gonna stay." Chloe nodded. "But as effortlessly as I make this seem, this dress is not exactly the most comfortable thing to wear."

"Top drawer." Oliver yawned and Chloe rolled off of him, grabbing a t-shirt from the top drawer and slipping out of her dress.

She slid herself under the covers and snuggled down into the pillow. Oliver rolled over, sliding his hand under the edge of her shirt, his cold fingers settling on her hips and sending shivers down her spine. With his eyes still closed he sought out her mouth and attempted to devour her. He was so tired but Chloe understood how he felt because she felt the same way. They'd wasted so much time not doing this and she was so scared that she was going to wake up and find that none of this had really happened. Chloe laughed and pulled away. "We've both been awake for two days." She rested her forehead against his. "I'll still be here tomorrow." She reassured him.

"Promise?" Oliver whispered.

"I'm not going anywhere." She said softly then smiled. "Besides, it's cold outside."

* * *

Author's Note: This story was inspired by the song "Baby It's Cold Outside". Some of the dialogue was taken directly from the lyrics some was adapted from the lyrics. For those of you not familiar with the song here are the complete lyrics: (There are many versions out there, my favorite is the one with Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong)

_I really can't stay - Baby it's cold outside  
I've got to go away - Baby it's cold outside  
This evening has been - Been hoping that you'd drop in  
So very nice - I'll hold your hands, they're just like ice  
My mother will start to worry - Beautiful, what's your hurry  
My father will be pacing the floor - Listen to the fireplace roar  
So really I'd better scurry - Beautiful, please don't hurry  
Well Maybe just a half a drink more - Put some music on while I pour_

_The neighbors might think - Baby, it's bad out there  
Say, what's in this drink - No cabs to be had out there  
I wish I knew how - Your eyes are like starlight now  
To break this spell - I'll take your hat, your hair looks swell  
I ought to say no, no, no, sir - Mind if I move a little closer  
At least I'm gonna say that I tried - What's the sense in hurting my pride  
I really can't stay - Baby don't hold out  
Ahh, but it's cold outside_

_C'mon baby_

_I simply must go - Baby, it's cold outside  
The answer is no - Ooh baby, it's cold outside  
This welcome has been - I'm lucky that you dropped in  
So nice and warm -- Look out the window at that storm  
My sister will be suspicious - Man, your lips look so delicious  
My brother will be there at the door - Waves upon a tropical shore  
My maiden aunt's mind is vicious - Gosh your lips look delicious  
Well maybe just a half a drink more - Never such a blizzard before_

_I've got to go home - Oh, baby, you'll freeze out there  
Say, lend me your comb - It's up to your knees out there  
You've really been grand - Your eyes are like starlight now  
But don't you see - How can you do this thing to me  
There's bound to be talk tomorrow - Making my life long sorrow  
At least there will be plenty implied - If you caught pneumonia and died  
I really can't stay - Get over that old out  
Ahh, but it's cold outside_

_Baby it's cold outside_


	2. I'll Be Home For Christmas

**I'll Be Home For Christmas**

"If they don't have any red and sliver you can get plain red or plain silver." Chloe took a deep breath then shook her head. "No, wait, I really want the red and silver." She bit her lip and turned to Lois. "What do you think?"

"What are we talking about again?" Lois groaned annoyed.

"Ribbon." Chloe reminded her. "For the banister." She turned her attention back to the phone. "Ok, so get the red and silver, you know the one that looks like a candy cane stripe, but a traditional candy cane stripe not that new one, you know with a big stripe, big stripe, then little stripe, not like that."

"Oh you are kidding me." Lois pushed herself up off the couch where she'd been sitting for the past two hours.

Lois had come to Star City for Thanksgiving and was staying a few days to keep Chloe from going crazy. Oliver had been out of town since the end of October working on a big merger and he had no idea when he was going to be able to come home.

For the most part all she'd really done was help Chloe put up a ridiculous amount of Christmas decorations but she was under the misguided impression that they were going to have lunch sometime that century. "I was really hungry when you said, '_let's go to the diner for lunch_'." Chloe winced as Lois made the actual air quotes. "But then when you asked, I was fine waiting '_just five minutes_' so that you could finish draping garland around the doors, even when that turned into forty five minutes." Chloe tried to protest but Lois stopped her. "I was slightly ok when you asked for '_another ten minutes'_ so you could hang the stockings, and how that took you an hour I still don't understand. But the only reason that I'm not eating your purse right now is because I ate one of the candy canes off the Christmas tree twenty minutes ago."

Chloe's eyes bugged out and she hung up the phone, not bothering to say goodbye. "Lois, those candy canes weren't real."

"I know." Lois whispered embarrassed. "But there's nothing in your fridge and I'm starving."

"Ok." Chloe laughed and grabbed her jacket. "We can get something to eat if food is really that important to you."

"I only need it to live but whatever." Lois rolled her eyes.

"Why didn't you just eat the power bar in your purse?" Chloe grabbed her keys and walked to the door.

"The power bar in my purse…I don't have a-" Lois dug through her bag and pulled out a power bar. "How did you know that was in there?"

"I put one in there every day." Chloe laughed. "Well I have Bart run by and put one in there every day because I know sometimes you work straight through lunch."

"You are such a mom." Lois nudged her shoulder.

"Didn't you ever wonder where they came from?" Chloe asked. "You eat it every day. Did you think your purse was magical or something?" When Lois didn't say anything Chloe laughed harder. "Oh my god you did?"

"Only for like a second, a fraction of a second. In my defense, with the lives that we lead is that so unbelievable?" Lois protested as they climbed in the car. "Actually I just assumed that my assistant did it."

Chloe shook her head then turned to Lois confused. "Wait, you don't have an assistant."

"Sure I do. Bobby, you remember Bobby." Lois reminded Chloe.

"Bobby's not your assistant Lois." Chloe told her. "He's just an intern."

"He doesn't know that." Lois glared at Chloe. "And he doesn't need to know that, I'm just getting him trained the way I want him."

"You're horrible." Chloe laughed.

"So what's up with Christmas Palooza back at the ranch?" Lois changed the subject.

"It's not so bad." Chloe said as they headed toward her favorite diner.

"No, it just looks like all the Whos in Whoville had a raging party, got drunk then threw up over every square inch of the place." Lois snorted.

"Thank you for that visual." Chloe sighed. "It's just, Oliver's been gone for two months on that stupid business trip. He missed Thanksgiving and it's our first Christmas living together and Christmas is sort of _our_ holiday." Chloe took a deep breath. "He told me about how his mom always went all out when he was a kid, decorated the house to the nines, no room was spared, not even the bathrooms and...I just want to make sure everything's perfect for him."

"You know he'd love it even if all you had was a sad little Charlie brown Christmas tree." Chloe looked over at Lois confused. "You know the one that Charlie Brown picks, the half dead one. It's all hunched over with like three pine needles and that one, small, sad red ornament." Lois sniffed.

"Are you crying?" Chloe leaned forward and Lois turned away from her. "You are, you're crying."

"Oh come on." Lois turned around and sure enough her eyes were slightly watery. She sniffed again and wiped her nose. "When Linus wraps the tree with his blanket and they all say…" Her voice waved slightly. "Merry Christmas Charlie Brown…how can you not cry?" Chloe just laughed as she pulled into a parking spot. "You're a cold, cold person you know that?" Lois snapped, throwing her door open and storming into the diner.

"Lois, I'm sorry for laughing." Chloe ran after her. "Come on."

***********

"I passed Lois in the hall and she wanted me to tell you that she's really mad at you." Bart walked into the living room two hours later.

"Right, like I didn't figure that out when she completely ignored me through lunch, all the way home, and has been sulking in the study for the past two hours." Chloe screamed over her shoulders.

"I'm not sulking." Lois screamed as she walked into the living room. "I'd just rather not waste my time decorating for Christmas with someone who has no actual Christmas spirit. You know what you are? You're the Grinch."

"The Grinch?" Chloe asked motioning around the fully decorated living room.

"This was all done under false pretenses and I for one refuse to participate." Lois turned and stormed off.

"What did you do?" Bart laughed.

"Nothing." Chloe rolled her eyes. "What's in the bag?" Bart passed over three bags full of silver and red ribbon with a satisfied smirk. "Oh, thank you." Chloe practically ripped the bags out of his hands. "It's the right stripe too." She hugged him.

"I had to go all the way to Chicago to find that you know." Bart sat down on the couch and got his first proper look at the living room. There was a fire in the fireplace, the tree was up and completely decorated, garland and ribbon decorated every available surface and Bing Crosby was crooning about a White Christmas over the surround sound. "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas." He smiled over at her. "What do I smell?"

"Gingerbread cookies." Chloe smirked and Bart started to speed off toward the kitchen but Chloe stopped him. "Hey, those are for later."

"But…" Bart pouted.

"No, no but, everyone will be here in thirty minutes, we'll decorate them and then you can eat them." Chloe said firmly but relented a bit at the pout affixed to his face. "Ok, in the cookie jar are some damaged ones, broken arms and legs and things."

"You're the best." Bart called from the kitchen, his mouth already full of cookies.

"There's Egg Nog in the fridge." Chloe called out to him.

Just as Chloe said, thirty minutes later everyone was there. Lois was speaking to her again and they were making a huge mess in her kitchen as they decorated the cookies. Chloe just sat in her chair at the table and smiled as Lois tried to draw a mustache on AC's gingerbread man and Bart kept breaking pieces off of the finished ones and popping them in his mouth when he thought she wasn't looking. Chloe really liked this new tradition, they'd only been doing it for two years but she could see them all twenty years from now sitting around her kitchen table with their kids decorating Gingerbread men. "You ok?" Lois nudged her shoulder.

"I'm good, I just wish Oliver were here." She reached across the table for the gum drops to make candy buttons when the doorbell rang.

"Ask and you shall receive?" Lois raised her eyebrows.

"I don't think he'd ring the bell at his own house." Chloe stood up and took off her apron. "And right about now he should be in Mumbai." She headed for the door as the doorbell rang again and called over her shoulder. "Bart, I saw that, give Dinah back her Gingerbread man."

"Hey!" Dinah turned away from where she was trying to roll out a scarf using marzipan and grabbed her cookie back from Bart.

Chloe opened the door to see Eric, Oliver's attorney standing on the stoop. "Hey." She covered her surprise with a smile and backed away to let him in. "Come on in, we're just decorating Gingerbread men, we've got enough if you want to join in."

"No thank you." Eric smiled at her but Chloe could tell his smile was forced.

"Well let me get you some coffee then." She motioned for him to follow her to the kitchen and he did. "So to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?" She handed him a cup of coffee. "Two sugars no cream right?"

"Thanks." Eric took the coffee mug and sighed. "I actually came to see how you were doing."

"I'm fine." Chloe poured her own mug. "Is there a reason that I shouldn't be?"

"You haven't been watching the news?" Eric asked her.

"No, I've had the Christmas music on all day." Chloe set her mug on the countertop heavily and AC walked over and turned off the stereo. "What's going on?" She asked and suddenly it was like she couldn't breathe, she just got this intense feeling that something as very very wrong. "Someone please tell me what's going on."

"Chloe, Oliver's plane went missing." Eric took a step forward. "Somewhere over the Himalayas."

"I don't…" Chloe closed her eyes and shook her head. "No that doesn't make any sense, he wasn't anywhere near the Himalayas, he wasn't even flying today."

"He was." Eric shook his head. "He was coming home early. He called everything off until after the holidays. He didn't want to miss your first Christmas together."

"But he didn't call and tell me." Chloe shook her head more forcefully, not wanting to believe.

"He wanted to surprise you." Eric said.

"What did you mean exactly when you said his plane went missing?" Lois asked when Chloe went silent.

"The plane got turned around in a snow storm and called in a distress signal to a relay tower in Bangalore requesting permission to land." Eric explained. "It dropped off the radar twenty minutes later and based on trajectory and speed, they've got a general idea of where it could be."

"And where is that?" Clark asked him.

"They think it inadvertently crossed the border."

"Into…" Victor asked.

"Afghanistan." Eric said and that's when Chloe's knees gave out.

"But they don't know for sure right?" Chloe asked him hopefully as Clark and Victor rushed forward to support her. They carried her into the living room and sat her down on the couch. "I mean they're not saying there was a crash…it could just be an equipment problem right, a radio failure?" She could feel the tears in her eyes and her throat was tightening. "Oliver didn't crash, he's not…" She trailed off, staring at something to the left of Victor. Everyone turned to follow her gaze and saw what she was looking at. Bart was staring at her, slightly in shock, a half eaten Gingerbread man in his hands; a headless, legless gingerbread man.

"Dude." AC nudged his shoulder and Bart seemed to realize what was capturing her attention.

"Oh shit." Bart turned quickly and tossed the gingerbread man into the fireplace. Chloe let out a pained gasp.

"That didn't help." AC sighed.

"Sorry." Bart stepped forward.

"No one said crash, not yet." Eric said. They were all silent for a while, trying to process everything.

"But it doesn't matter does it?" Chloe said finally what Eric wouldn't, not to her face anyway. "If he did crash, he crashed in hostile territory, a place they can't even hope to search for him. If he didn't crash and he just wandered into Afghani air space…well let's face it, they're not exactly running low on surface to air missiles are they and they're kind of shoot first and ask questions later."

"You can't think like that." Lois sat down next to her as Chloe started to hyperventilate. "Ok, not now, you've got to think positive ok."

"Ok." She took a few deep breaths and nodded.

"We don't know anything yet. Nothing is definite." Lois rubbed her back. "And it's Christmas time right, it's the time for miracles."

"Have you ever seen a Christmas miracle?" Chloe looked up at Lois, willing herself not to cry and failing.

"Yes." Lois nodded. "Two years ago when you and Oliver finally got drunk enough to forget about all the reasons why you shouldn't get together and just did it."

"That was pretty miraculous." Victor chimed in. "You know we had a pool going and no one won because we thought it would take another ten years before you guys finally figured it out."

"Miracles huh?" Chloe asked and nodded calming herself. "Ok then."

**********

"Honey, you shouldn't watch this." Lois grabbed the remote to turn the news off and Chloe grabbed her wrist to stop her. It was a week later and Chloe had yet to see hide nor hair of a miracle. She'd been watching CNN nonstop, and they'd been showing coverage nonstop. Since there wasn't much news to show they'd just been using the time talking about Oliver, about his life, about his business. Two days ago the reporters showed up and camped out on the lawn and every now and then they would report from her front porch and Chloe honestly couldn't describe how surreal that was.

"I know." She admitted not taking her eyes off the screen lest they suddenly sneak something relevant into the ticker.

"How about we do the Gingerbread house?" Lois offered. "I've been baking the pieces all morning."

Chloe could hear the desperation in Lois' voice. She should have gone home a week ago but she didn't want to leave Chloe alone in this state. So she stayed, she'd cooked, she took care of Chloe and she worried, basically every minute of every day that wasn't spent worrying about Oliver was spent worrying about Chloe. Chloe knew that and she knew that this hadn't been easy on her cousin. Making a gingerbread house was something they'd done every year since they were kids and she felt like she needed some normalcy so she nodded. "Can we do it out here?"

Lois offered her the first real smile in what felt like forever. "I'll go get everything."

Chloe nodded but kept watching the television even as Lois stumbled into the room trying to carry the pieces of the house, the icing and the decorations, all precariously balanced on one tiny little cookie sheet. "I'm not as good at this yet as you are. It's your recipe so it should still taste good, but the pieces may be a little crooked."

"So we'll have a gingerbread house that leans slightly to the left but it'll taste good?" Chloe smiled and for a minute it seemed like just another ordinary Saturday at Christmas, making the gingerbread house, just like they always used to. Then just like that, in the blink of an eye it wasn't anymore. The door opened almost ominously and Bart and Clark walked in slower than they'd ever walked in before.

Relations between Afghanistan and America were tense and in an attempt at a show of faith in the budding democracy, the American government had decided not to storm across the border to search for Oliver's plane. Instead they were choosing to trust the Afghani government who said they had every available resource they could spare out searching. Considering they couldn't even find Bin Laden Chloe didn't really have high hopes of them finding Oliver, granted, the fact that he was worth more than a few billion dollars made him slightly more valuable to them than Bin Laden if only for a ransom as Victor so helpfully pointed out.

Chloe however wasn't subject to the whims of the American government and had sent her own search party out. Clark and Bart had been looking for the past five days. They'd obviously just come back from another round because the snow in their hair hadn't even melted yet. "No." Lois dropped the tray to the ground, her breath catching in her throat at the look on Bart's face.

"We didn't want to find anything." Bart took a few more steps into the room. "Chloe trust me when I say how much I didn't want to find anything."

"A plane?" Chloe asked standing up slowly. "You found a plane?" Clark nodded and Chloe's mouth was suddenly very very dry. "But it doesn't mean it's his plane." She was grasping at straws now. "It could be any plane. How many planes have gone down in Afghanistan in the last three years alone. Maybe it's not his plane, maybe…" But there were no more maybes, not when Bart held out his hand and showed her a piece of fabric, a pattern that Chloe knew well, the bright orange nylon that covered Oliver's chairs. "Maybe…" She was really reaching now and Bart straightened out the fabric so that she could see it. The elaborately embroidered Q that Oliver had in all of his vehicles, his plane, his cars, even on the seat of his bike.

Chloe felt tears roll down her face, the first time that she'd really allowed herself to cry. She reached for the fabric and Bart gave it to her. She clutched it in her hands like a lifeline as Clark and Bart explained to Lois where they'd found the plane. "Did you find…" Lois swallowed hard and looked at Chloe who was barely there enough to pay attention. "Were there any survivors?" She practically whispered the question but Chloe's head spun around regardless.

"Yes." Bart nodded. "The pilot, not dead but close enough, lots of broken bones, possibly some internal bleeding. The whole time we were there he was in and out of consciousness, but he'll live. I think."

"Ollie?" Chloe asked.

"Not that I saw." Bart turned to Clark who shook his head no.

"So then he could have been alright?" Lois asked, now she was the one grasping at straws. "He could be alright?"

"Yeah, maybe." Bart nodded trying to give them hope. "It looked like it was just a hard landing, not necessarily a crash. The cabin was mainly intact; the cockpit got the brunt of the damage."

"So he could have walked away." Lois said more for Chloe than anything. "I mean the cabin was fine and Oliver wasn't there so he could be fine?" No one said anything and Lois was gearing up to scream when Chloe put a hand on her arm.

"No." Chloe shook her head. "Because if he did walk away, you have to remember what he walked into, it's not like he crashed in Disney Land."

"If he's still in country I will find him and you know that." Bart said. "If he's anywhere on this planet I will find him." Bart said then sat down next to Chloe and offered her a smile. "And if he's somewhere not on this planet then Clark here can take care of that."

Chloe nodded and hugged him tightly. "So what do we do next?" Lois wrapped her arms around herself and looked over at the television. "I mean we have tell someone where it is, but who and how?"

"They won't find it on their own." Clark sighed. "It's in a very remote area. It would take them months."

"The pilot, Jim." Chloe pulled away from Bart, her voice cracking. "He's got a wife and a kid, they need him."

"I could go back and get him." Clark offered. "Bring him to a hospital?"

"And how will we explain that?" Chloe shook her head. "Bart I want you to go back, look after him, try and do whatever you can to keep him alive until we can get a rescue party to him." Bart nodded and was gone.

"How do we do that?" Lois asked her.

"I'll call Eric." Chloe stood up. "He knows…enough not to ask any questions. He'll figure out a way." She turned the corner and something crunched under her feet. "Oh the house." She stared down at the remains of the gingerbread walls that Lois had spent all day baking. "It's ruined."

"No." Lois looked at her determined. "We can fix it." She bent down to pick up the pieces. "We can fix this."

Chloe wanted to tell her _"You can't"_ but she bit her tongue and dialed Eric's number instead.

***************

Chloe didn't know how Eric did it or who he talked to but the next day they found the plane, they found the pilot and airlifted him to the nearest military hospital. The amount of reporters camping out on Chloe's lawn seemed to triple over night and Lois had to throw her phone in the pond out back because her editor wouldn't stop calling demanding that she take her unique position as Chloe cousin and spin it into an exclusive.

In the days leading up to Christmas, Chloe had only left the house once. She'd braved the reporters shouting questions at her so that she could go to the hospital. So that she could stand on the roof and hold the hand of Sarah, Jim's wife as they airlifted him into Star City General.

Chloe had pulled every string she could think of to get him from Afghanistan to Germany, Germany to Seattle, and then Seattle to Star City. She'd be damned if, hospital bed or not, Jim was going to spend Christmas without his family. Sarah stood next to Chloe tearful but happy as the helicopter landed. The picture on every paper the next day was that of Sarah grasping her husband's hands as they wheeled him into the hospital, Chloe stoically watching in the background, sunglasses on to cover her own red, puffy, tearstained eyes.

The whole time she'd stood there as Sarah cried, as they unloaded Jim from the plane, as the doctors explained to Sarah that there was a twenty percent chance that the trauma he'd suffered would likely leave him paralyzed, Chloe had been jealous. She knew it wasn't logical, that she should be jealous of a woman whose husband was coming back broken. She knew it was the most ridiculous thing in the world but at least Sarah knew, she knew where her husband was, she knew exactly where her husband was, knew exactly how broken her husband was.

Chloe couldn't imagine the pain that she'd be in right now if it was Oliver they were unloading on a gurney or god forbid even in a casket, but she had to think, she had to hope that maybe it would hurt a little less than what she was feeling right now, the not knowing. As if Sarah could sense it she turned and ran to Chloe, hugging her tightly and squeezing her hand, offering her a sad smile and a hurried "Thank You."

She'd gone straight home after that, crawled into her bed, nuzzled deep into Oliver's pillow, and hadn't left it since. All of her energy had been spent trying to get Jim home, as if by doing that maybe it would bring Oliver home but it hadn't worked. And while she was happy for Sarah and happy for Jim, it didn't dull her own pain any. "It's Christmas Eve." Lois said from the doorway.

"I don't care." Chloe mumbled. The most she'd spoken in days.

"Everyone's here Chloe, they were thinking we could open presents and then have diner and maybe go to Mass." Lois said from the edge of Chloe's bed, Chloe and Oliver's bed. "You love midnight Mass."

"I have no reason to go to Midnight Mass." Chloe said and Lois tried a different approach.

"Bart decided to try and make some homemade egg nog this year. It's truly atrocious but all the booze makes it slightly bearable." Chloe snorted and lifted her head. "You have to get out of this bed at some time."

"He said he'd be home for Christmas." Chloe looked over at her cousin. "He promised me."

"When?" Lois frowned.

Chloe reached under the pillow and pulled out her phone, tapping the screen a few times until suddenly Oliver's voice was ringing out from the speakers. It was an old message he'd obviously left her and the fact that she mouthed along to it word for word let Lois know she'd been listening to it a lot. "So right now it's Thanksgiving. You're probably trying to force down Lois' really dry stuffing as Bart eats everything that's not bolted to the floor while I'm stuck in a hotel room with fifty Indian guys who are arguing over half a line in a contract that I really don't even care about at this point. I'm sorry I'm not there, I'm sorry I'm not going to be there. I don't know how much longer this is going to take but I want you to know, that right now, I'm making you a promise. I'll be home for Christmas. You can plan on me ok." He sighed and Lois watched Chloe's eyes tear up again. "So here's what I'm gonna need you to do for me. You should definitely have snow, a maybe some mistletoe, and there should certainly be presents under the tree. I'm sorry, I've got to go, but I'll be home for Christmas."

"Only in my dreams." Chloe mumbled as she pressed the button to save the message. She dropped the phone and then looked up at Lois. "So I'm not going to open presents, I'm not going to Midnight Mass, I'm still waiting for my miracle." She said.

"You can wait just as good downstairs getting drunk on homemade egg nog as you can up here." Lois grabbed her arm and pulled her down the stairs, the comforter wrapped around her like a sort of armor and Chloe almost laughed, until she saw Eric standing in her entryway.

"Eric?" Chloe walked over to him.

"Chloe, how are you?" Eric leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

"I'm holding up, barely." Chloe pulled the blanket tighter around her. "They haven't…did they find him?"

"No." Eric shook his head.

Chloe didn't understand how that one word brought her both an untold amount of relief and an untold amount of pain. "Oh, well can I get you something or did you just…what are you doing here?"

"I came to talk to Lois." Eric looked over at Lois and then back at Chloe who was waiting for more of an explanation than that. "There's a situation but I'm taking care of it. I just wanted to fill Lois in."

Chloe frowned. "Well why don't you fill me in?"

Eric was completely silent for a minute. "It's about the house."

"My house?" Chloe looked around the front hall.

"That's just it, unfortunately it's not your house." Eric winced.

"Why don't we sit down?" Lois asked looking between the two of them. She led her cousin to the couch and sat her down. She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to Chloe. "The other day you got this letter and I assumed it was a mistake and didn't want to bother you with it, so I called Eric."

"It's a notice of eviction?" Chloe looked down at the paper as if were written in Chinese.

"The board has been discussing what to do with Oliver's assets." Eric explained.

"They don't even know for sure if he's dead." Lois said annoyed.

"They're nothing if not efficient." Eric said and the tone in his voice let Chloe and Lois know at least he was as disgusted by their behavior as Lois was. "There's been a dispute about the Will."

"Ok." Chloe frowned still not understanding.

"When you moved in last year Oliver came into my office and changed his Will leaving the house to you."

"He gave me the house?" Chloe whispered.

"His intention was to give you the house." Eric said. "And there-in lies the problem."

"How exactly?" Lois asked.

"The house was left to Oliver by his parents as part of his Trust." Eric pointed out.

"Which he got when he turned twenty one." Chloe said.

"Yes he did." Eric said. "But for tax reasons, he left the house in the Trust. As per the rest of Oliver's Will, the Trust itself is to be absorbed into the company."

"But he left her the house." Lois said.

"But it's a part of the Trust and they're meeting with a team of outside lawyers right now to determine if Oliver's intentions stand or whether being a part of the Trust makes the house thiers." Eric said.

"So they can just kick me out?" Chloe asked looking down at the paper.

"If it turns out that it's a part of the Trust, that they own the house, they can just kick you out." Eric nodded sadly.

"But doesn't Chloe control the company too?" Lois asked and Chloe glared at her. "I'm just saying, he left her the house but not the company?"

"I don't…"

"He wanted to." Eric assured her. "Eventually I do believe that was the plan but he wanted to talk to Chloe first, make sure that's what she wanted before he did anything so drastic. The house though, he wanted to make sure she was taken care of."

"Well he screwed that up didn't he?" Lois snorted.

"I don't care." Chloe said. "They can have the house I don't want the house I just want…" She broke off. She didn't have to say it. She just wanted Oliver back.

"No. You're not moving out, you're not going anywhere." Lois stood up angrily. "Is she?"

Eric looked at Chloe's devastated face and then at Lois' indignant one and nodded, determined. "No she's not. Mr. Queen wanted you to have this house if anything happened to him. He wanted to make sure that you had a home, that you were taken care of and it's my job to make sure that Mr. Queen gets what Mr. Queen wants." He knelt down in front of Chloe and grabbed her hand. "They will not take this house from you do you understand? I won't let them."

"I don't care." Chloe said suddenly.

"Chloe." Lois turned to her.

"No." Chloe dropped the blanket. "I really don't care Lois. They can have the house, in fact they can have it now, they can have it all." She looked around. "They can have the tree." She walked up to it, yanking the cord from the wall and knocking the tree over into the mantle and then to the ground and she stepped over the broken ornaments. "They can have the garland." She walked over to the doorway and yanked it all down. "They can have the lights." She ripped those down too then pulled the stockings from the mantle, the ribbons from the banister and whatever she could get her hands on. "They can have to stupid Nativity set." She walked over to the hall table and brushed everything off, the Nativity set and everything else with it, even the Gingerbread house that Lois had spent hours gluing together with icing almost like it was a puzzle, shattering it all over again. "They can have it all."

"Chloe." Bart stepped forward cautiously. At some point everyone had made their way into the living room. "Chloe, stop."

"No." Chloe shook her head. "I've been waiting for my miracle and its Christmas Eve. It's not coming, so you know what?" She looked around the room and grabbed her blanket. "Christmas is cancelled."

She stormed up the stairs with every intention of packing up all her things and finding a motel or something to stay in for the night. She managed to pull a bag down from the closet and even tossed a few things in there before she broke down on the floor. That's where Clark found her a few minutes later. He picked her up and carried her to the bed. "He promised me." Chloe sobbed.

"I don't know Oliver as well as you do but what I do know is this, if he made you a promise, he'll do everything in his power to keep it." Clark said, smoothing her hair from her forehead as she cried herself to sleep.

**************

Chloe woke up a few hours later. Clark was gone and the house was deathly quiet. She briefly wondered why it was so quiet and remembered her breakdown. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment and she assumed that they'd all finally left, been pushed away by her and she was saddened by that thought. She made her way down the stairs, only to stop, her foot hovering over the bottom step.

The living room had been put back together. The tree had been righted, the broken ornaments swept up. The garland and lights were re hung, the stockings all dangling from the mantle. The Nativity set had been glued back together with super glue and the gingerbread house had been glued back together with icing. Chloe cracked a smile at it, breaking off a piece of the chimney and popping it in her mouth.

She was suddenly starving and realized she couldn't remember the last time she ate anything. She heard a loud snoring and turned to see that no one had actually left, they'd just fallen asleep. All of them were camped out in her living room, sprawled on couches, curled up on the rug, hanging over the side of the chair.

She took a deep breath for the first time. She may not know where Oliver was, if he was dead or alive, but it was Christmas Eve and her family was here and that was all that mattered.

She was on her way to the kitchen to fix something to eat when she heard a crash outside the back door that sounded like her recycling bin being knocked over and she froze. She walked slowly to the kitchen, stopping in the hall closet to grab something from the top shelf. She heard the door knob rattle and made her way to in the room just as the door slid open. "You're going to want to stop right there." Chloe said quietly yet sternly. "I have a crossbow currently aimed at your heart and you'd be extremely surprised at how good a shot I am."

"I wouldn't actually." The figure said, the voice so familiar that Chloe dropped the crossbow to the ground with a clatter and shakily reached for the light switch. She blinked a few times as her eyes adjusted and then decided she had to be dreaming when she saw Oliver standing there. "Seeing as how I'm the one who taught you to shoot it."

"Oliver?" Chloe whispered and took two steps forward, bringing a hand to his cheek, laughing almost hysterically when she felt cold skin under her fingers. He looked rather worse for the wear, badly healed scratches covered parts of his face, he was walking with a slight limp and a rather scruffy beard had attached itself to his chin, but none of that mattered. "Oliver." She flung her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, holding him tight, vowing not to let go.

"I missed you too Sidekick." Oliver seemed to relax into her embrace as if he'd been waiting for this very moment for the past month and he very much so had.

"I thought you were dead." Chloe sobbed into his shoulder, half crying, half laughing. "I thought I'd never see you again." She babbled. "They found the plane and Jim, oh God Jim, but they couldn't find you and there was no trace and Bart and Clark have been looking."

"It's ok, I'm ok." Oliver assured her over and over again until she'd stopped crying.

"Oliver?" Lois asked from the doorway sleepily. "Oh God, Oliver." She ran across the kitchen floor, sliding a little in her socks until she slammed into Chloe's back, wrapping her arms around the both of them before pulling away and slapping him across the face. "Where the hell have you been?"

Chloe pulled away and smiled at the shocked look on his face. "What she said."

"Could we maybe not do this now?" Oliver winced and rubbed his cheek. "You're gonna wake up the whole house."

"Too late." Victor smirked from the doorway, Dinah, Bart, Clark, and AC all in varying stages of waking up next to him.

"Dude, I've been looking everywhere for you." Bart said, almost annoyed with him.

"And you didn't think to try the kitchen?" AC joked.

"Where _have_ you been?" Dinah asked.

"I want to tell you all, I do but I'm starving and I'm tired and I really, really want some coffee." Oliver said dropping his bag to the ground.

"I'm actually pretty hungry myself." Chloe said.

"The fridge is full of food." Lois actually looked sheepish and Chloe looked at her confused. "You were practically comatose for a week and I had nothing better to do so I cooked, a lot."

"You know what?" Oliver looked at Chloe scared. "I'm not that hungry." His stomach betrayed his story as it growled loudly.

"Sit down." Lois practically shoved him into a chair at the table.

Oliver swallowed. "Do you know if my life insurance policy is up to date?"

**************

An hour later when they had gorged themselves on everything from lasagna to tuna noodle casserole, (and gingerbread men for desert), and none of them were dead or bowled over in pain from food poisoning, Oliver told them his story. He told them about how he'd hated missing Thanksgiving and was upset about all the Christmas things he would miss, the gingerbread men, the gingerbread house, decorating the tree, going caroling. So he decided to suspend all business until the first of the year, to surprise Chloe. He then told them about the freak storm, about the hard landing. He told them about waking up to find Jim hurt and himself in hostile territory.

He explained how he did what he could for Jim, then left for help. He came across a group of embedded marines, it took eight days to traverse the country but they managed to smuggle him across the border into Iran. He had no papers, no identification, no way to get home. If he'd gone through the proper channels to get them it would take weeks, even maybe months and he didn't have that time, he didn't want to wait. He'd promised that he was going to be home for Christmas, so they hooked him up with another guy who was smuggling Iranian Saffron (a surprisingly lucrative industry at $500 an ounce) into America.

Oliver gave the guy his Rolex as payment for passage and spent three days traveling across eastern Europe in the back of a truck that was most of the time filled with goats. They made it to Brussels where they flew to New York and from there he'd stowed away on cargo trains and hitch hiked until he finally made it home. He told her how he wanted to call her, to let her know he was ok but had no cell phone and no money so he couldn't, how the Marines had promised they would do everything they could to get a message to her, to get to Jim, but his only thought was of getting home to spend Christmas with her.

Then Chloe told her story, about how they found the plane before the Marines could get someone out there. She told him how she did everything she could do to get Jim home, get him the help he needed. Then she told him how much Eric had done, suggesting Oliver give him a substantial raise. She told him about receiving the eviction notice from his board which sent him into such a rage they had to practically hold him back from calling a meeting at half past eleven and firing the lot of them.

Seeing the time Chloe smiled. "If we leave now, we can make it to Midnight Mass." Chloe offered and Lois smiled at her.

"You sure?" Lois asked her hopefully.

"I got my miracle." Chloe said. "I think maybe I should go say thanks and maybe celebrate the miracle that's the reason for this holiday."

"Sounds like a plan to me." Oliver said. "Do I have time to shower, maybe shave?"

"I don't know, I kind of like the beard you know." Chloe reached up and brushed it softly. "It's kinda sexy."

"It's itchy." Oliver scratched it.

She let him shave it but she didn't let him out of her sight. She sat on the counter in the bathroom while he showered and shaved, helped him dress in fresh clothes and stared at him the whole ride to the church. "Ok, what's going on? Did I cut myself shaving or something?" Oliver stopped her before they went inside.

"I just still can't believe you're here." Chloe blushed.

"I promised you." Oliver kissed Chloe's temple as the church bells chimed midnight. "I told you I'd be home for Christmas, you can count on me."

"Yeah, I can." Chloe smiled up at him.

At some point they were going to have to explain how Oliver was in Star City when he was supposed to be in Afghanistan. Oliver was definitely going to have to make some changes in his Board of Directors, and Chloe was going to have to figure out some way that could possibly come close to thanking Lois for everything she'd done. But now they were going to go into the church, they were going to light a candle and celebrate the birth of Christ. Then they would go back home, open presents and probably eat Lois' Gingerbread house, which while vastly crooked was still pretty delicious. And while she hoped in the future they could skip the plane crashes and last minute miracles, Chloe realized that they'd just started a new tradition.

*********

Author's Note: I promise that part three will be a lot happier. Hope you enjoyed it. Merry Christmas all. The song used in this Chapter was I'll Be Home For Christmas. Full lyrics here:

_I'll be home for Christmas  
You can plan on me  
Please have snow and mistletoe  
And presents 'neath the tree_

Christmas eve will find me  
Where the love light gleams  
I'll be home for Christmas  
And you'll be in my dreams  



	3. Santa Baby

**Santa Baby **

Chloe looked around the street at the unfamiliar setting and checked the directions on her phone for the fifth time. "We're lost." Bart tucked his hands in his pockets.

"We're not lost." Chloe scoffed and looked around the now deserted street. "I do believe we're still in Star City." She smiled at Bart and then stopped an old woman coming out of a brownstone. "Do you know where I can find 32B?" The woman looked at Chloe up and down before nodding and pointing to a stairwell that was partially obscured by an overgrown bush. "Thank you."

"What are we doing here again?" Bart asked, itching to run, to do something besides walking down the same street for the seventeenth time.

"I'm picking up Oliver's Christmas present." Chloe walked down the steps and knocked on the door.

"What did you get him?" Bart looked around.

"A full scale model of the Napoleon." Chloe tapped her foot impatiently.

"You mean like the short dude who tried to conquer the world?" Bart asked confused.

"No, _the_ Napoleon." Chloe laughed. She could see a light on so she knocked again.

"What's that when it's at home then?" Bart laughed.

"It's a French Naval Battleship." Chloe explained. "The first steam powered battleship in the world actually."

"Wow, that's…I didn't realize Oliver was so into French Battleships." Bart said lamely.

"He's not." Chloe shook her head. "It's my "random" present." Before she could knock again the door was yanked open hard and she and Bart stood staring a rotund short bald guy with very thick glasses.

"Henry?" Chloe asked. He wordlessly stepped back and motioned for them to follow him in.

"You guys still do that "random" thing?" Bart asked, walking through the room, admiring table after table of the intricate models that littered every surface. "I thought that was just like a joke."

"It started out that way." Chloe said as they followed Henry through the room. "Then it kind of stuck." She shrugged.

It had been a joke the first time. It was Oliver's first birthday since they'd gotten together and Chloe was freaking out over what to get him. Lois didn't know either, they hadn't had a birthday or a Christmas in the few months the two of them dated and when Chloe asked for her advice all she'd said was a very unhelpful, "Yeah, what do you get for the guy who has everything…or at least the money to buy anything he wanted."

After scouring the internet for days trying to come up with the perfect gift she realized that the perfect gift was impossible. Lois had been right, what did you get the man who had everything he ever wanted? In a moment of near hysteria Chloe figured out the answer, you get him something he never wanted. Fueled on by this idea she'd pulled up Wikipedia and hit the "random article" button a few times until she came across something she found interesting.

It was an article on a movie called _The Thin Man, _it was based on the book of the same name written by Dashiell Hammett, the guy who wrote the Maltese Falcon and created the greatest detective of all time, Sam Spade. Chloe and Lois had watched Humphrey Bogart banter with Mary Astor so many times they could practically quote the movie by heart. Much to her chagrin however, she'd never even heard of the Thin Man or it's four sequels. So she logged onto Amazon, bought all five movies and wrapped them up.

Oliver was confused at first. He'd never even read the Maltese Falcon much less seen the movie but after Chloe told him her reasoning behind the gift, possibly just to humor her, he vowed to watch all five movies. As it turned out, the movies were really enjoyable, hilarious as a matter of fact and thus a new tradition was born. For Chloe's birthday she received a Compendium of Philippine Epic Poetry. For Christmas that year Oliver was presented with a Sholes and Glidden typewriter, (the first successful commercial typewriter) and Chloe was the proud recipient of a framed baseball card for John Gochnaur, widely considered the worst major league baseball player in history.

Chloe's random Wikipedia article this year was about the Napoleon and short of buying Oliver the actual ship, which she wasn't even sure it existed anymore, a scale model had been her next best option. So that's how she found herself at Henry's staring at the ship in awe. Bart stopped beside her. "It's…big." He said looking at the ship which was easily three feet wide and four feet tall.

"I didn't think…I always imagine model ships to be small." Chloe tilted her head. "You know, like it can fit into a bottle or something."

"This is a very important ship." Henry said speaking for the first time. "It required a lot of detail and for that I needed surface area." Chloe didn't argue, she'd come to Henry because he was the best at what he did, the only one who had an sort of knowledge about the Napoleon, and she'd found that he could become very temperamental.

"Look, it's even got little men on it." Bart reached forward and both Henry and Chloe slapped his hand away before he could touch it.

"It's bigger than I expected." Chloe admitted. "I'm not going to be able to carry it. Can I send someone to pick it up later?"

"I suppose so." Henry rolled his eyes as if he was being heavily put upon.

"Thanks." Chloe took one last look at the massive steam ship and then back at Bart. "Where is he going to put that?"

"You could clear out the downstairs study." Bart joked with her.

***************

"When was the last time it snowed in Star City?" Lois asked when Chloe answered the phone. It wasn't the most random thing she could have asked but it was pretty close.

"I don't know, not since I've been here." Chloe thought about it.

"So you wouldn't say that it gets horribly cold there?" Lois asked. Chloe could hear typing in the background and based on the time she assumed her cousin was at work.

"Why?" Chloe asked her.

"Oliver bought you a fur coat." Lois said answered. "A really nice one, Sable, beautiful brown stripes. It just doesn't make any sense, if it doesn't snow and it doesn't get very cold, you're not really the fur coat type."

"Hold on, what do you mean Oliver bought me a fur coat?" Chloe furrowed her eyebrows.

"For Christmas." Lois said slowly as if Chloe was simply being thick.

"He bought me a fur coat for Christmas?" Chloe stood up slowly and started pacing. "Why on earth would he do that? I've never expressed an interest in fur, never asked for a fur coat…that makes absolutely no sense, unless it's my "random" present. But usually that's something more…random."

"A fur coat in California is random." Lois sighed.

Chloe paused. "Wait a minute." She turned her attention back to Lois. "How do you know what Oliver got me for Christmas? I know he didn't tell you because he knows you can't keep a secret."

"I can to keep a secret." Lois protested.

"Case in point Lois, you just told me what he got me for Christmas." Chloe pointed out.

"He never specifically told me that I couldn't tell you." Lois countered and Chloe was silent, not believing it for one second. "He didn't, because he doesn't know that I know."

Chloe closed her eyes, possibly praying to God for the strength to deal with her cousin. "How do you know?" Chloe asked again, hoping to get a straight answer this time.

"It wasn't very hard to figure it out. I just had to check recent purchases on a few of his credit cards. Only took me five minutes." Lois let out a breath. "It would have taken considerably less time if he had a few less credit cards."

Chloe pinched the bridge of her nose, wondering how she'd managed to deal with Lois on a regular basis when she still lived in Smallville, then realized that Lois didn't used to do this stuff in Smallville. It wasn't until Chloe moved away from her that she'd gone completely insane. "Look I don't know why he bought me a fur coat for Christmas, maybe he has a good reason, maybe he's taking me to Russia or something I don't know, what I do know is he probably didn't want me to know he bought me a fur coat for Christmas. Can't you just be content with snooping into your own Christmas presents?"

"No, it was ridiculously easy to figure out what Clark got me this year, I didn't even have to snoop, he hides them in the same spot every time, like the hayloft in the barn isn't the first place I'm going to look." Lois scoffed. "Speaking of, awesome giant battleship, it's the Napoleon right?" Before Chloe could ask how on earth Lois knew that she answered for her. "Army brat remember. I got a head full of useless military history trivia."

After spending more than three hours trying to figure out where to hide a four foot tall model battleship Chloe eventually bribed Clark into picking it up and taking it back to Smallville with him, which is how it ended up in the hayloft in the barn. "Anyway, I know no matter how hard I try I'll never figure out what you got me so I decided snooped into your presents this year."

"Why can't some things just be a surprise?" Chloe asked, almost resigned to her cousin by now.

"Because that's just not how I'm wired Chloe." Lois said as if that answered everything and in a way it sort of did.

"What if it's not for you?" She said suddenly.

"Lois, I'm not sure what's more disturbing, the fact that you feel the need to hack into my boyfriends credit cards just to figure out what he's buying me for Christmas or that you now believe he's buying fur coats for someone else, insinuating that Oliver, of all people, is having some sort of affair." Chloe said.

"It doesn't seem likely." Lois said after a while. "But neither does him buying you a fur coat." Chloe was about to rejoice in her small victory when Lois went and ruined everything. "Either way I'm going to keep an eye on things."

"What does that mean?" Chloe asked, slightly horrified by what she imagined it to mean and knowing Lois, it was probably ten times worse than that.

"Don't worry about a thing Chloe, I'm staying right on top of this, we'll get to the bottom of it." Lois said determined.

"Lois, wait there's nothing…" Chloe tried to reason with her but she'd hung up. Chloe looked down at her uselessly disconnected phone. "Nothing good can come of this." She said sagely, little did she know.

*************

It didn't take long for Chloe to figure out just exactly what Lois meant when she said that she was going to keep on top of things. Apparently one aspect of that seemed to be keeping a very close (and blatantly illegal) eye on Oliver's credit card purchases, which she kept Chloe appraised of every time something new came up. Basically what that meant was Chloe's inbox was inundated multiple times a day with ridiculous e-mails from Lois. They ranged from things like, "$250 dollars for lunch is crazy" which Chloe secretly agreed with to "Do you have any idea how much money the man spends on socks?" which Chloe probably doesn't want to know actually.

"Lois I really don't care if he just spent $300 on toothpaste…actually I do kind of care if he just spent $300 on toothpaste because that's just completely unnecessary." Chloe said. "He didn't just spend $300 on toothpaste did he?" She bit her bottom lip anxiously waiting the answer.

"No." Lois scoffed. "But he bought you a car."

"He bought me a what?" Chloe was not prepared for this.

"A car." Lois said. "And I know this one's for you because he put the title in your name."

"He bought me a car?" Chloe said more slowly, trying to let it sink in.

"Yes, keep up ok." Lois snapped and she could practically hear her rolling her eyes.

"But I just bought a new car, all on my own like six months ago." Chloe reminded her.

"Well it's not new." Lois said. "It's really old actually, did you happen to mention to him some previously, unknown to me at least, love of classic cars?"

"No, I'm not really a car person you know that." Chloe said. "It's a classic car? Like a collectors sort of thing?"

"I guess." Lois said. "A '54 Chevy. Corvette actually, pristine condition. I'll send you the add I found for it online if you like, it's in great condition."

"What the hell's going on?" Chloe asked mainly to herself but Lois just laughed.

"Now aren't you glad I kept snooping?"

"No, now I'm even more confused than I was before." Chloe blew out an annoyed puff of air. "Wait, there's no way he bought a car with a credit card."

"Well that would be ridiculous." Lois snorted. "Do you have any idea what the interest rate would be like on an 80 grand charge?"

"He paid 80 grand for it?" Chloe asked weakly.

"Not like he doesn't have the credit limit though." Lois pointed out.

"So wait, if he didn't pay for it with a credit card, how did he pay?"

"Bank transfer." Lois said absentmindedly then winced when she realized what she'd said.

"How do you know about his bank transfers?" Chloe rolled her eyes skyward in vain. "Lois how do you know…"

"I've got Bobby keeping an eye on his accounts ok. I thought he might try something like this." Lois admitted.

"Something like what?" Chloe was annoyed now. "You can't just hack into someone's bank accounts. That's it, I was humoring you before but you've gone too far. I'm changing his passwords tomorrow and I'm putting a tracker program on so I'll know if you, or Bobby, tries to access them again, are we understood?"

"You take all the fun out of Christmas." Lois pouted before hanging up.

Chloe had spent the better part of her day trying to figure out what on earth would possess Oliver to buy her a car, a classic car of all things. She was distracted all through dinner and didn't even know how she managed without asking Oliver what the hell he was thinking. Currently she was brushing her teeth, trying to figure out how to ask Oliver without actually asking Oliver while he got undressed in the other room. "So the strangest thing happened today, all the passwords on my bank accounts and credit cards were changed."

She winced and then spit, rinsing her mouth out very slowly as she weighed her words carefully. She walked to the bathroom door and smiled, toothbrush in her hand. "Yeah I did that." She turned and walked back into the bathroom and started brushing again.

Oliver dropped his cuff links on the dresser and walked to the bathroom, an expectant smile on his face, watching her through the mirror. "Chloe?" She looked up, her mouth full of toothpaste and raised her eyebrows. "Is there a particular reason why you felt the need to change my passwords?"

Chloe spit again, rinsed her mouth and wiped down the sink then turned around with a smile on her face, at least secure in the knowledge that part of her story wouldn't be completely made up. "Well, see here's the thing, Victor and I were doing a routine check of some of our systems which by the way, there were quite a few surprisingly insecure holes in our security that really need to be addressed in the New Year." She scolded him as if it were his fault when in reality it was her job to deal with all the computer stuff, Oliver just bankrolled it. The truth of it was that she and Victor had been doing a security check earlier that week.

"I'm sure you'll take care of it, you always do, but what does that have to do with my bank account?" He smirked pulling off his shirt and tossing it in the hamper.

"Right so if the systems that Victor and I painstakingly created were so easily breeched I started to wonder about other things. Your bank accounts, my bank accounts, our credit card information, all far too easily accessible." She turned around, unsure as to whether or not she had yet perfected her poker face where Oliver was concerned, she quickly shot back a capful of mouthwash and started to rinse. She spit out the mouthwash and spun around, smiling brightly. "I'm calling the bank in the morning."

"You worry too much." Oliver leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

"I worry just the right amount thank you very much." She winked and squeezed past him to jump into bed. She burrowed under the covers and waited to hear the sound of the heater kicking on as Oliver slid in behind her. She instinctively curled her back up against his chest and sighed at the heat that warmed her.

"Ollie."

"Hmm." He asked sleepily, the sound shaking his chest and echoing through the whole body.

She opened her mouth to ask him, what was up with the car and the fur, but with his warm chest pressed up against her back, his breathing evening out Chloe decided that if Oliver had done something, he'd done it for a reason, so if he bought her a car and a fur coat there was a reason and she was just going to have to trust him. "I love you."

"Love you too." He mumbled into her neck.

****************

"You're never going to guess where I am." Lois was whispering and immediately Chloe realized that was definitely not a good sign.

"Please tell me you're at the Library?" Chloe asked, knowing as soon as the words left her mouth, she'd never be that lucky.

"Yeah, right. No, I'm at the Star City docks." Lois whispered.

"What are you doing in Star City?" Chloe asked, hoping that the additional question of "what are you doing at the docks" would be understood if not stated.

"Following your boyfriend." Lois told her.

Chloe was going to call the doctor on Monday and see if she could get a prescription for valium if she promised to only use it in conjunction with contact with Lois. "Why are you following Oliver?" Chloe asked then paused, checking her watch. "Why is Oliver at the docks in the middle of the day?"

"Now you're asking the right questions." Chloe could practically hear Lois' smile through the phone. "And the answer, dear cousin, is that he's buying you yet another Christmas present. I had a feeling he wasn't quite finished with his spending spree and since you've locked me out of his accounts I've had to do this thing old school. I came into town a couple days early, hope you don't mind."

"What could he possibly be buying me at the…please tell me he didn't buy me a boat." Chloe asked hopefully.

"No, not a boat, defiantly not a boat." Lois laughed and Chloe slumped against her chair in relief. "He bought you a yacht."

"A yacht?" Chloe asked, wondering when her life had turned into this.

"Yeah, hold on he's going into the office, let me see if I can get a closer look." Chloe was put on hold for a minute before Lois came back on the line.

"It's nice." Lois said and Chloe could hear what sounded like doors opening and closing. "A little modern for my tastes but I suppose that's what you get for six million dollars." Chloe could feel her throat closing up a bit. "It's got eight bedrooms, a bar, two salons, a huge master suite, a gym, oh and Jacuzzi." Lois said. "The view from the sun deck is amazing."

"Lois please tell me you didn't sneak onto my yacht." Chloe asked.

"Ha, you're already calling it "your yacht"." Lois snorted into the phone. "He named it Sidekick's Hideaway, what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Lois please get off the boat."

"It's not a boat, it's a yacht." Lois corrected her.

"Right, well whatever the hell it is, it's not technically mine yet so you're still technically trespassing and I'm already a little on edge in case you couldn't tell so I'd appreciate it if you would please not get arrested today. I'm not sure I could handle having to come down to the station and bail you out. I know I couldn't handle telling Oliver why I had to bail you out."

"Fine, fine, I'm leaving…oh my God, there's a movie theater in this thing." Lois said before hanging up the phone.

**************

"I'm starting to get worried about him." Lois said walking in the house without preamble. "This isn't like him, tossing money around left and right, especially not on you."

"What does that mean?" Chloe balked at her.

"I mean you're not really the type of girl who would appreciate a Sable coat or a classic car or even a luxury yacht. Hell the only gift I ever got when we were dating was a Maid Marion costume, and come to think of it, I gave that back to him."

"Wait are you actually worried about Ollie or are you just jealous that he bought me a yacht and he only loaned you a costume?"

"Can it be a little of both?" Lois asked and Chloe smiled. "But seriously what's going on with him. I mean I don't think any of these are your "random" gift but at the same time, I don't see him spending this kind of money on... such frivolous things."

"You think there's something else going on?" Chloe asked. Where before she'd just been confused, now she was suddenly worried.

"I don't know. I mean it's not like he suddenly caught some rare disease that makes him buy stupid shit." Lois pointed out. "He hasn't been exposed to any strangely colored meteor rock lately has he?"

"Not that I know of." Chloe chuckled. "Look, I'm tired of talking about this." She rubbed a hand over her face. "Can we just be glad that you're here? Christmas is in five days and I've got all the stuff to make the Gingerbread house in the pantry."

"Fine." Lois pulled herself off the couch and walked to the kitchen. "But I get to put on the shingles this year. You never let me put on the shingles."

*****************

They spent a relatively uneventful evening building the gingerbread house. Oliver was surprised but not unhappy to see Lois there a few days earlier than expected and even her strange interrogation didn't arouse his suspicions that she was there for any reason beyond wanting to spend the holidays with her cousin.

Chloe on the other hand was now firmly in the camp with Lois that something was going on and when Lois donned herself all in black and proceeded to follow Oliver every time he left the house, Chloe turned a blind eye, hoping beyond hope that when she returned it wouldn't be with news of a new purchase. And for two days she was lucky, but then the day before Christmas Eve Lois slipped into the house thirty minutes after Oliver had come home, walked past Chloe and up the stairs without uttering one syllable and Chloe excused herself from the room to follow.

She got to Lois' room, let herself in and closed the door behind her. "What's he bought now?"

"You're not going to like it." Lois shook her head and Chloe glared, crossing her arms over her chest. "Trust me you don't want to know."

"I didn't want to know about the coat, or the car, or the boat but that didn't stop you." Chloe pointed out.

"He bought you a mine." Lois told her.

"A mine?" Chloe frowned. "I don't know what that means."

"It means a mine, like with miners and pick axes and things." Lois said frantically.

"A mine?" Chloe repeated trying to process this in her head. "Like an actually mine where they mine things?"

"Not a whole mine obviously." Lois shook her head. "Because that would run him around 500 million, no he just bought you a controlling share."

They sat in silence for a minute and then Chloe laughed, she couldn't help herself, she laughed at the ridiculousness of the whole situation and at her own confusion and threw her hands in the air, giving up, Lois followed suit and soon they were gasping for breath. "So what do they mine in my mine?" Chloe asked.

"Platinum." Lois told her and Chloe paused, something about that clicking something in her memory but she couldn't quite grasp what exactly.

*****************

Christmas Eve dawned with no significant purchases since the platinum mine and they thought maybe they were in the clear. Lois and Chloe baked and decorated sugar cookies to bring to the hospital later that night, where Oliver would play Santa and pass out gifts to the kids and nothing could spoil the mood, that is until Lois' phone rang out the tune to Mission Impossible.

"That'll be Bobby." Lois wiped her hands off on her apron and grabbed her phone.

"Why is he calling you on Christmas Eve?" Chloe smiled and Lois blushed. "Lois, do you have him working on Christmas Eve?"

"Not exactly." Lois said. "Not for the Planet anyway." She shook her head. "I've got him watching Oliver's accounts for any further activity."

"Oh God, what now?" Chloe threw her hands in the air as Lois answered the phone, talked for a minute, frowned, then hung up the phone. "Did he buy me a plane?" Chloe bit her lip as Lois didn't say anything. "Oh God, bigger? Did he buy me an Island?" Still Lois said nothing, "Two Islands." Chloe was getting more worried with every second. "An archipelago?"

"What? I don't even know what that is." Lois shook her head.

"It's a chain of Islands." Chloe was wringing her hands now.

"No." Lois said. "He bought you well, a house."

"A house?" Chloe frowned. "But I have a house, she motioned the house that they were currently standing in."

"Yeah I know, Bobby says he thinks it's like a rental property." Lois explained. "Two houses technically, it's a duplex."

"He bought me a duplex?" Chloe was confused.

"One more thing." Lois said. "He opened you a bank account."

"A bank account?" Chloe turned to her cousin even more confused now.

"Yeah, he put a few thousand in there then ordered you a box of checks." Lois shrugged.

Lois slid her phone back into her bag and walked over to the stove, pulling the sheet of finished cookies out and sliding them to the countertop. Chloe worked silently icing the snowmen and then moving onto the Christmas trees. Christmas music was playing in the background and slowly Chloe started to humming along, Lois following suit as Brenda Lee sang on about Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.

The song ended and still slightly pre-occupied with trying to figure out just what exactly Oliver was thinking a new song started. Eartha Kitt's Santa Baby. The both of them still absently hummed along with the music as the lyrics managed to somehow penetrate their brains.

_Santa Baby, slip a Sable under the tree,_

_for me._

_Been an awful good girl_

_Santa Baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight._

_Santa baby, a 54 convertible too,_

_Light blue._

_I'll wait up for you dear,_

_Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight. _

Lois stopped transferring the finished cookies to a Tupperware box, listening more intently to song and Chloe followed suit, letting her spatula fall to the table.

_Santa baby, I wanna yacht,_

_And really that's not a lot,_

_Been an angel all year,_

_Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight._

_Santa honey, there's one thing I really do need,_

_The deed_

_To a platinum mine,_

_Santa honey, so hurry down the chimney tonight._

Lois and Chloe both seemed to connect the dots at the same time, freezing and then looking up at each other. "No way." Chloe just shook her head.

"It has to be." Lois said a smile forming on her face. "A Sable coat." She ticked the presents off her fingers. "A 54 convertible."

"What color was it?" Chloe asked anxiously.

"Light blue." Lois smiled even wider.

"A yacht, a platinum mine." Chloe continued.

"A duplex and checks…" Lois was practically jumping up and down with excitement at this point. "He's buying you presents based on the song."

"But why?" Chloe asked. "I mean I've been singing it around the house for almost a month now but I have no idea what would posses him to do this. Does he think I want these things? That I need these things?"

Lois frowned and then her eyes got wider and wider and wider. She reached over and spun the knob on the radio, turning the song up louder as it came to a close. "There's one more thing, one more gift." Lois pointed out.

_Santa baby, forgot to mention one little thing,_

_A ring._

_I don't mean on the phone,_

_Santa baby, so hurry down the chimney tonight,_

_Hurry down the chimney tonight,_

_Hurry, tonight._

"You don't think…" Chloe asked, her throat suddenly very dry. "A ring?"

"Oh my God." Lois screamed practically squealing with excitement. "He's going to…" Chloe reached forward, slapping a hand over her mouth cutting off the last word.

"Don't say it." Chloe warned her as Clark and Oliver poked their head in the door way. They looked at Chloe, and then at Lois who seemed to be bursting to say something that Chloe wasn't allowing her to say.

"Everything ok in here?" Oliver asked.

"Everything's fine." Chloe smiled at him. "Perfect actually. We're almost done with the cookies."

"Ok, well I'm going to change and head to the hospital." Oliver nodded at her.

"Well be ten minutes behind you." Chloe promised, still not removing her hand from Lois' mouth until the both of them were far away from the kitchen. "Don't say it." She said as Lois opened her mouth.

"Don't you want him to?" Lois asked confused as they finished icing the last of the cookies.

"No, I don't know." Chloe looked up at her cousin. "Maybe?"

"Maybe?" Lois whistled. "I'm pretty sure maybe's not the answer he's going to be looking for."

"We don't even know for sure that he's going to be asking me anything that will require an answer." Chloe said sternly.

"You want to find out for sure?" Lois asked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

"Oh I don't like that look." Chloe shook her head as Lois just smiled brighter.

An hour later, when they were forty five minutes late for the hospital party they stood in the middle of Chloe's completely decimated closet even more confused than they had been before. "I don't understand." Lois was looking around. "There's no ring anywhere in this house."

"Lois just drop it." Chloe shook her head dejectedly.

"You don't have like any smuggler's holds or secret tunnels?" She asked instead.

"Drop it." Chloe snapped. When Lois had first suggested that Oliver might be planning on asking her _the _question, she sort of panicked, she wasn't sure if she was ready for that, if they were ready for that. She told herself as they tore apart the house searching for the ring that she only needed to know for sure so that she could figure out what to say to him. But now, now that they hadn't found a ring, that all signs were pointing to the fact that he wasn't planning on asking her that very important question she found herself sorely disappointed.

"You would have said yes huh?" Lois asked, for the first time since she started this whole thing, actually feeling bad about it.

"I think so yeah." Chloe nodded. "It doesn't matter, when he's ready I'll be ready." She rubbed the back of her neck. "Come on, we need to get to the hospital and figure out some way to explain to Oliver what happened to the house."

"We could say you were robbed." Lois offered, stepping over piles of clothes to make her way to the door.

"Robbed by someone who took nothing?" Chloe asked.

"I could take a few things." Lois smiled. "Just to make it believable."

***************

Chloe somehow actually managed to forget her disappointment when they got to the hospital. Watching Oliver play Santa, how he was with the kids didn't make her want him to ask her any less, in fact it made her want it all the more but she knew that someday they would get there and she was ok with waiting. She'd even almost managed to put the whole thing out of her mind until Lois came up and poked her in the back. She'd been sitting down with a girl named Emily from the cancer ward who was showing Chloe all the things her new doll could do and Chloe almost spilled her coffee all over the place. "We forgot something." Lois whispered conspiratorially in her ear.

"Lois, I'm in the middle of something." Chloe pointed out as Emily looked up confused.

"Hey kid." Lois looked down at the girl. "You like magic?" Emily nodded. "Ok, I want you to go over there and count to fifty and something…amazing will happen." Emily nodded and walked over to the corner that Lois had indicated. Chloe could see her counting as Lois grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.

"Lois you don't know any magic." Chloe protested.

"Sure I do, I'm about to make us disappear." She said slipping through the doors and taking Chloe with her. Chloe tried to protest but Lois simply stuck her phone in Chloe's face. "We forgot something, in the song."

Chloe grabbed the phone and held it slightly further back so that she could actually read it and noticed that on the screen was a website with the lyrics to Santa Baby. One line in particular stood out to Chloe, the same line that Lois had noticed.

_Come and trim my Christmas tree_

_With some decorations bought at Tiffany's _

Chloe turned to Lois. "Did we check the tree?" She asked.

"No." Lois smiled. "Did you see anything different about it? Ornaments that you didn't put there?" Chloe shook her head and Lois smiled bigger. "Do you want to drive?" Chloe just nodded her head and grabbed the keys out of her hand.

They made it back to the house in record time, Chloe was almost positive that she'd be receiving at least two red light camera tickets at the first of the year but it didn't matter. When they walked into the living room they noticed that all over the tree, nestled in different places, were over half a dozen little blue boxes. "How did we not see that before?" Chloe stepped forward cautiously then stopped. "Wait, we can't do this, this is not what civilized people do." Chloe stepped back. "This is wrong, it's just…wrong." Chloe said firmly and Lois nodded.

"Right. You feel better having said that?" Chloe nodded. "Good, I give you permission to blame this all on me if it blows up in our faces." Lois stepped forward and grabbed the first blue box.

"Don't you mean when?" Chloe asked following Lois and grabbing her own blue box.

Eight Robin's Egg Blue boxes, three sets of earrings, two necklaces, two bracelets and one key chain later they were still ring less. Chloe sat dejectedly on the floor of the living room, open boxes all around her as she slowly began to realize just what she'd done. "Oh God." She said seeing the destruction that her house had become. Drawers were pulled out, cushions overturned, no surface left unexplored in Lois and Chloe's quest to find something they weren't even sure Oliver had bought her.

"I thought for sure we'd find it here." Lois pouted.

"Do you see what we've done?" Chloe collapsed backwards, smacking her head painfully into the plush carpet. "What kind of person does this?" Chloe asked. "I can't believe I…" She took a deep breath and turned to Lois, her eyes wide. "Oh God, I've ruined Christmas."

"Don't be so melodramatic." Lois snorted.

"I'm not." Chloe protested. "Look around you, I've destroyed the house, I've opened all of Oliver's presents, completely ruined the surprise and for what?" She could feel the tears start to well up in her eyes as she stared up through the bottom of the Christmas tree at the ceiling. A flash of blue floated through the edge of her vision and then something landed on her chest, small but hard. She lifted her head up and saw one unopened Tiffany's box lying there.

"Looking for this?" Someone asked from the doorway and Chloe sat up abruptly to see the smiling face of Oliver as he leaned against the edge of the couch. The box tumbled from her chest to the floor and Chloe reached out a hand to grab it.

"Oliver…I…" Chloe looked around the room and then at the box in her hands. "It's all Lois' fault." She offered lamely and Oliver laughed, a real, deep, hearty laugh before pushing himself up off the couch and walking toward her.

"I'd imagine it is, yeah." Oliver cast one fleeting look of amusement at Lois who was trying and failing to look indignant. "So are you going to open it?" He asked stopping in front of Chloe and crouching down so that they were at eye level with each other.

"I…but…you…" Chloe really honestly couldn't remember where her grasp of the English language had gone and for some reason she couldn't make her mouth form the words _Sorry, I didn't mean to, _and _Again, Lois._

"Well I mean I had this whole thing planned, you know with the song and the presents, but I'm guessing you already know about all that." Oliver slowly, gently took the box from her fingers which wasn't easy because she had it in a vice like grip.

"You bought me a yacht." Chloe swallowed. "And a platinum mine." She shook her head, slowly returning to reality a bit. "What am I supposed to do with a platinum mine?" She asked him, half serious, half panicked.

"You'd been dancing around, singing that song since the middle of November and I just thought it would be a cute way to do this."

"It was a crazy way to do this." Chloe laughed at him as tears welled up in her eyes.

"I'm gonna stick with cute." Oliver shook his head.

"You bought me a platinum mine." Chloe reiterated as if that made her whole point for her.

"Only half of one technically. And you don't have to keep anything you don't want to." Oliver chuckled as he slid the ribbon off the box, opened the top and dumped a black velvet ring box into his hands.

"I'll take the yacht." Lois piped up rapidly.

Oliver and Chloe both shot a look at Lois that was equal parts endeared with equal parts, _shut the hell up._ She was about to say something else when Clark was suddenly at her side, his hand covering her mouth. "Look." Oliver said, his voice shaky with nerves, his fingers no longer sure as they fumbled with the box, struggling to open it and Chloe slid her hands over his, stilling them. "Last year I went through hell just to spend Christmas with you and it made me realize that I wanted to spend every Christmas with you, and every Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day and pretty much the rest of my life." He took a deep breath. "I bought this ring on January 3rd last year but I waited until now to give it to you…not because I was unsure but because Christmas is sort of our time and we're usually pretty lucky in the way of miracles this time of year."

"You thought you'd need a miracle to get me to marry you?" Chloe laughed wiping her tears away.

"I wasn't going to take any chances." Oliver pointed out flipping the box open to reveal a stunningly perfect pear shaped diamond solitaire ring, simple and elegant and so very…Chloe. "So what do you say?"

"Well I didn't tear the house apart just to say no." Chloe smiled at him, reaching forward, desperate to kiss him, wondering what she could have possibly done in a past life that was so good to earn her someone like Oliver in this one.

"So that's a yes right?" Bart asked from the doorway.

Chloe pulled away from Oliver, panting, her cheeks flushed, a smile on her face and she nodded. "That was most definitely a yes." She assured him as Oliver slipped the ring onto her finger.

"Son of a…" Bart grumbled, digging a hundred out of his pocket and slapping it into Dinah's outstretched hand.

She just smirked and slipped the bill into her top of her bra. "Merry Christmas to me." She said. "I believe this calls for champagne." She turned into the kitchen.

***************

After the celebration had died down and everyone had tried to lay claim to one of Chloe's Christmas presents, Lois changing her request to the car when Chloe had adamantly declared that she was most definitely keeping the yacht, after everyone had either gone home or wandered off into one of the guest rooms, Chloe and Oliver found themselves curled up on the couch, a fire roaring in front of them and half a bottle of warm champagne on the table. The both of them were acutely aware of how much this mirrored their very first Christmas together. "So maybe I didn't ruin Christmas after all." Chloe smirked.

"Not completely." Oliver chuckled. "You also didn't actually manage to ruin all the surprises." He smirked walking over to the tree and pulling a very square, flat present from underneath it.

"What's this?" Chloe asked taking it from him. "Let me guess." She studied the thin gift and smiled. "Based on the shape and size, I think you've gone out and bought me my very own Sovereign Nation and this is the Royal Decree making me it's Queen and Master."

Oliver laughed deeply at her and shook his head. "Nothing quite so extravagant I'm afraid."

"Wonderful." Chloe smiled pulling the paper open. "Because the only other thing it could be is a new calendar, which is just what I wanted seeing as how in about six days mine will no longer be useful."

"Not a calendar either." Oliver shook his head as Chloe ripped off the paper eager now and this, this was what she was trying to explain to Lois all those weeks ago, this feeling, this excitement of not knowing what you were going to get.

"It's a record." She said flipping the small sleeve over in her hands in confusion.

"Not just any record." Oliver took it from her and walked over to the sound system, sliding the vinyl out of its sleeve and slipping it onto the record player. "It's an original first pressing of "Yes! We Have No Bananas" from the 1922 Broadway revue, _Make It Snappy_."

"Of course, I should have realized." Chloe chuckled as he lowered the needle and the song spilled into the room. Oliver winced slightly as the music started.

_There's a fruit store on our street  
It's run by a Greek._

"I'll admit, it's not very Christmassy." He held out his hand and Chloe stood up and allowed him to spin her around the room, the two of them laughing and dancing as the song played on in the background.

"It's perfect." Chloe countered and right then at that moment, it really was.

_But yes, we have no bananas  
We have no bananas today._

They collapsed on the couch as the record ended in a tangle of limbs and laughter and the grandfather clock in the hall chimed signaling the arrival of midnight. "Merry Christmas." Chloe kissed Oliver softly, unable to wipe the smile off of her face. She was only slightly worried that it would stick there and never come off and her cheeks were starting to hurt but it didn't matter. She pulled away and laid her had on his chest. "Oh by the way, there's a five foot model of the Napoleon in Clark's barn loft." Chloe said tiredly.

"The French Naval Battleship Napoleon?" Oliver asked. "First ever steam powered battles ship?" Chloe lifted her head up to look at him, amusement sparkling in his eyes. "Yeah, Clark is surprisingly just as bad as Lois at keeping secrets." He laughed. "You know when it doesn't involve having super powers or being from another planet."

"Sorry I didn't get you anything else…I've been a little pre-occupied." She shrugged.

"Don't worry." Oliver reached out and grabbed her left hand, slipping his fingers through hers; sliding along the band of the ring that now lay on her fourth finger as if it had always been there, as if it belonged there. "You got me everything I wanted."

*********

Author's Note: There was supposed to be at least two more chapters but I'd like to get them done before Christmas so it might just be the one more, but at least they'll be one more. Hope you enjoyed and feedback is always the best Christmas present.


	4. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

Robbie Queen wasn't just being quiet, he was being mega super ultra quiet. Conner once said he couldn't be quiet for more than five minutes straight but he'd been here for two hours and his mom hadn't found him yet because he was being mega super ultra quiet.

Uncle Bart called it stealth. Robbie had stealth. He would have to rub that in Conner's face, that is, if stealth was something a person could have, maybe it was just something a person could do. He made a mental note to Google that later.

Either way he was being stealthy, had been stealthy for the past two hours now and still no sign of Santa Claus.

He was going to settle this thing once and for all, the question of whether Santa Claus was real or not. When he'd asked his Mom and Dad, they'd told him that Santa was real, but they also told him that there was a tooth fairy and she had turned out to be a sham.

He'd figured that one out in a way that he believed was rather clever. Shannon from school told him that his Dad was actually the one who put the money under the pillow. So the next time he lost a tooth, Robbie snuck into his dad's wallet without him knowing, (another case of his supreme stealth) and wrote his name on all the bills. Sure enough the dollar that appeared under his pillow the next morning had his name signed on the back in green marker.

When presented with the evidence, his dad had tried to keep up the charade, claiming that he'd had to make change for the tooth fairy, who'd unfortunately shown up with only a twenty. Conner had piped up that she wasn't very good at her job if her sole purpose in life was stick dollar bills under kids pillows and she walked around with nothing smaller than a $20. Eventually his mom broke down and explained that the tooth fairy was a story parents told to keep kids from freaking out about losing teeth which made quite a bit of since when Robbie thought about it. He remembered his first loose teeth, he'd been scared to have it pulled because it hurt a lot but then his dad told him he could get a dollar for it and suddenly he didn't care about the pain.

Conner then helpfully supplied that the Easter Bunny was also a fake. Dad had grounded him for two days for what he called "maliciously destroying Robbie's childhood illusions". Robbie didn't say anything because, well, he liked it when Conner got punished, but he'd never really believed the whole Easter Bunny thing in the first place. It just never made any sense to him why a giant bunny would sneak into your yard during the night and hide plastic eggs in your bushes as a way to celebrate Jesus' miraculous rise from the dead.

****************

Normally he would have been in bed long before now but he was determined to wait up until Santa showed himself. It hadn't been easy and he didn't think he'd make it but around nine o'clock when his mom had gone into her office for a while Robbie snuck down the stairs into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. He knew his mom and dad drank it in the morning when they wanted to wake up and his mom drank it when she had to stay up late at night so Robbie thought it might help. Boy did it.

It was the most disgusting thing he'd ever tasted in his life, even more disgusting that that time they'd gone to Aunt Lois' house for dinner and his mom insisted that he eat at least one bite of everything on his plate, even the burnt brussels sprouts. He hated brussels sprouts with a passion and Aunt Lois' had been covered with this strangely gooey sauce that made them even more disgusting. But that hadn't been so bad because afterward his dad had said that he could still feel the sauce coating his tongue and mom had given in and taken them all out for double chocolate sundaes.

Despite it's disgusting taste, Robbie had drank the whole cup, and thirty minutes later he was wide awake. His leg wouldn't stop shaking for the past hour and he'd been having the strangest urge to run down the stairs out to the garage and back just because. He checked his watch again and was surprised to note the time had somehow flown by, it was already eleven forty five, fifteen more minutes and it was Christmas. Robbie was secretly pleased with his accomplishment, especially since he could hear Conner, his seventeen year old brother who had once stayed up all night playing Call of Duty and then gone to school the next morning, upstairs snoring away.

Robbie was starting to get bored though. His mom had been on the computer for the past two hours doing "taxes". "Taxes", Robbie had found out a few years ago was his parent's code word for "secret superhero stuff". Yeah his Dad was the Green Arrow and his Mom was Watchtower, they ran the JLA, only the coolest superhero team ever, (Stephen Rollins says the Fantastic Four are way better than the JLA but Robbie knows better).

At first he'd been worried, he was even tempted to go wake up Conner and Stella. As much as his older sister and brother annoyed him, they had a tradition, every time their dad went out as the Green Arrow they'd meet up in the tree house out back until he got home, (partially because the tree house had the best view of the street so they'd be able to see his car coming five minutes before it got there, and partially because his dad had built the tree house with Conner when Conner was Robbie's age and they all just felt safe there. Stella had told him once that bad things couldn't happen in the tree house).

Their parent's didn't know that they knew about the Green Arrow, about the JLA and Conner said it was best if they kept it a secret. He said that if mom and dad knew that they knew about them, they would worry more about their kids than their jobs so it was better for all involved if they just pretended that they were oblivious. Stella said that Conner was an idiot, Robbie personally felt like that was one of the smartest things Conner had ever said.

The thing was, they didn't work on Christmas Eve, it had been one of his mom's biggest rules, everyone knew it, Robbie had known that long before Robbie even knew about the JLA, no one works on Christmas Eve, so the fact that she'd been called in must have meant that it was an emergency and emergency's were never a good thing for them. The last emergency had landed their dad in the hospital for months. It had been really hard to pretend like they believed mom's story about a car accident, (even though she'd gone so far as to have Uncle Clark total an actual car and fake a police report, his mom was good, he'd give her that much)

However as tempted as Robbie was to go wake up his big brother and sister, what if Santa came while he was gone? What if they sat out in the tree house and missed him completely. No, he decided that he was a big boy and he could handle this one all by himself. He stared transfixed at his mom, he couldn't hear what she was saying but he didn't have to. Once she'd set up her computer to the television he could watch every keystroke that she made.

He held his breath for what felt like an hour when she jumped off the couch in a frenzy, pressing her finger hard into the earpiece and screaming, "Arrow, God damn it report now!" He relaxed when she relaxed but he could practically feel his heart beating so hard in his chest he was sure that there was no way his mom couldn't hear it.

Eventually, whatever she'd been helping his dad do was done and she closed up all her equipment. She paced for a while, a habit that Robbie noticed his mother generally indulged in when she was really mad about something. But Robbie knew there wasn't going to be trouble unless she started talking to herself, which, for the moment, she wasn't doing. Eventually she must have tired herself out because she fixed another cup of coffee, curled up on the couch and turned on White Christmas.

That's when Robbie started getting bored. He was trying to decide if eleven forty five was past Santa's bedtime, if maybe he should just count his loss and go to bed, secure in the knowledge that perhaps there wasn't a Santa Claus. Just as he was about to do this he heard the tell tale squeak that announced the back door was opening. He watched as him mom got off the couch very cautiously and make her way toward the kitchen only to relax and smile as none other than Santa Claus himself came into view.

Robbie stood up from his crouched position, his muscles rejoicing at finally being stretched after sitting still for so long, his eyes wide as his mom laughed and hugged Santa. His mind was reeling with all of the new things that he'd learned in the past few seconds. Santa was real, Santa was there in his house, his _mom_ obviously knew Santa, was perhaps even friends with him. Robbie stared as his mom grabbed Santa's bag and walked toward the living room, smiling and talking the whole time. Robbie longed to know what they were talking about but if he tried to get any closer it would give away his position. He had to make himself content with just seeing and not hearing. He smiled and tiptoed to his room and grab his camera, hoping he could get it and be back before Santa left, imagining the look on stupid Jason Blackman's face when he showed up to school with proof, actual proof that Santa was real.

He pulled the camera from the second drawer of his dresser and walked back to the landing only to stop dead in his tracks, the camera slipping from his fingers and dropping to the floor with a dull thud. In the short time that it had taken him to get his camera everything had gone horribly wrong. He stared in comic disbelief at the sight in front of him, his mother standing in the middle of the living room bold as day, kissing Santa Claus.

***************

Chloe was not happy; she had one rule, one single rule. It's all she really wanted, all she ever really asked for. No one works on Christmas. For almost twenty years now that had been the one thing in her life that never changed, until tonight, until Oliver called her at ten o'clock apologizing, swearing that he would spend the rest of his life trying to make it up to her if she would please just help him out this one time, with this one thing. She'd been ready to refuse, it had been on the tip of her tongue and then he'd played the trump card, orphans.

Who can turn down a sad orphan story at Christmas? Not Chloe Queen that was for sure. He'd told her how he overheard some of the nurses talking at the hospital about how the warehouse where the city kept all the toys for the "Toy's for Tot's" program had been broken into and all the toys stolen. The toys that were given to needy families, the toys that were supplied to all the orphanages in Star City, gone. That was hundreds, thousands of kids, all who were going to wake up on Christmas morning without toys. How could she say no to that?

So she'd hacked into the police department, stolen the file on the case, which wasn't much, and gotten to work. It had taken some hard work and a few tricks that were definitely not legal for Chloe to track down the scumbags who felt that it was ok to steal from orphans at Christmas. She sent the team out immediately to check out some of their known hideouts and hit pay dirt on the third location, an abandoned farm out in the country.

Things had gone down pretty smoothly from there on. Victor and AC secured the toys as Dinah, Bart, and Oliver rounded up the dirt bags. There had only been one moment, when one of the guys started shooting then ran and Oliver took off after him alone that Chloe got slightly annoyed but it all worked out in the end. They dropped the guys off at the police station and spent the rest of the night making sure that all the toys got to where they needed to be.

She'd calmed down and now she was sitting on the couch waiting for Oliver to get home watching White Christmas for the third time. She heard the back door open and paused, normally Oliver came in through the front door so she paused the television, got up slowly and walked in the direction of the kitchen. She relaxed instantly when Oliver walked out of the kitchen wearing his Santa suit. She wanted to yell at him but honestly she was so relieved that he was home and not full of bullet holes that she simply flung herself at him and hugged him tight.

"What's with the suit?" She asked into his neck, reveling in the fact that simply being in his arms still managed to calm her down, even after all these years.

"It's all I had on me." Oliver shrugged. "I went straight from the hospital so it was either wear this or the Green Arrow gear, I thought this would be less suspicious on Christmas Eve." He pointed out as Chloe pulled away reluctantly. "I can't wait to take it off though, it's hot and itchy."

"Actually leave it on for a while." Chloe reached behind him and pulled the red bag off his shoulder. From the weight she was guessing this was where he'd stashed his gear. "Robbie's been waiting up for hours to catch Santa, he's probably up there right now watching us and I'd like it if we could stretch this out for one more year at least."

"Then I guess I better play my part." Oliver smiled as they walked into the living room. "It is sort of fitting tonight though. I really felt like Santa when we dropped off those toys."

"I suppose, just this once." Chloe turned around. "You're forgiven for working on Christmas Eve."

"How generous of you." Oliver joked. "Look." He pointed out at a bundle of leaves hanging from the ceiling fan. "Mistletoe." He reached out and grabbed Chloe by the waist pulling her flush up against him.

"Robbie." Chloe protested and Oliver turned around.

"He's gone, probably got tired and went to bed." He leaned down and brushed Chloe's nose with his softly. " Besides, I basically just saved Christmas, don't you think that earns me a kiss?"

"I suppose you have been a very good boy." Chloe smiled before closing the distance between them, kissing him softly and slowly, like they had all the time in the world, like they were the only two people in the world. She was so caught up she never even heard the thump come from upstairs.

**************

Conner was having the perfect dream, as far as dreams go, he was relatively assured that there was no way that a dream could be more perfect. He's not exactly sure where he was supposed to be but he was wearing a tux, and when he says wearing, he means rocking, no one had ever looked that good in a tux before, not even, dare he say, Mr. James Bond himself. So there he was rocking this tux when he turns around and sitting right in front of him was a ridiculously stunning Lamborghini Reventon and as often as Conner had dreamed of that car that wasn't what was catching his attention at the moment. Draped across the hood of the car was Sloane Peterson, the hottest senior ever to grace the halls of Ridgemont Prep wearing a dress that was so short he wasn't a hundred percent sure it wasn't just a shirt. She was smiling at him.

She tossed him the keys and he caught them, one handed, like a pimp and just as he opened his mouth to say "Your place or mine?" He was squirted in the face with water.

Conner woke up sputtering to see the smug face of his sister Stella smiling down at him. "Told you it would work." She passed the squirt bottle back to Robbie and pulled her robe tighter around her. "Squirt bottles, not just good for training cats."

"What the hell?" Conner sat up and wiped his face off with the pillow case.

"Mom's doing taxes." Stella yawned.

Conner frowned and threw his covers off looking between his sister and brother and shaking his head. "But it's Christmas Eve, no one works on Christmas Eve, not even the Green Arrow, it's mom's number one rule."

"Actually she's finished doing taxes now." Robbie walked over to the door and closed it softly. "I mean she was doing taxes but now she's not doing taxes." He took a deep breath, still trying to organize his thoughts. "I just said that she was doing taxes because I had to tell you something and you never listen to me unless you think it's serious and to make you think it was serious I said she was doing taxes."

He hadn't really had time to think this through. All he knew was that mom was kissing Santa Claus, his dad was going to be home any minute and Conner would know what to do. Only he couldn't get Conner to wake up so he'd gone to Stella who ignored him until he lied about his mom doing "taxes".

"Wait you lied to me?" Stella glared at him and Robbie shook his head.

"Yes, I'm sorry about that, I know you shouldn't lie and normally I don't lie but I had to wake you up because I had to tell you because Dad's going to be home any minute and he's ruined Christmas and I hate him and I don't even care anymore if I get a new computer." Robbie knew that the words were just spilling out of his mouth, he knew that they sounded too fast, to rushed, even to his own ears but there was nothing he could do to stop it.

"Are you on something?" Conner leaned down and looked more closely at Robbie.

"Conner." Stella slapped his arm.

"Look at him, the dude is tweaking." Conner protested.

Stella looked closer at Robbie and frowned. "Robbie, you know you're not allowed to have coke after 5 o'clock." Stella scolded him.

"I didn't." Robbie insisted. "I had some of mom's coffee."

"Oh my God. She's is totally gonna kill you." Conner laughed.

"Look, we've got bigger problems than that." Robbie said.

"I really don't think you understand how pissed mom's gonna be." Conner shook his head.

"She's not allowed to be mad." Robbie shook his head. "Because I saw her."

"Saw who what?" Stella asked.

"I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus." Robbie said, seriously, truthfully, worriedly.

Stella and Conner just looked at him for a second then busted out laughing.

"It's not funny." Robbie stomped his foot annoyed. They never took him seriously. "I saw her. I was waiting because I thought he wasn't real so I wanted to see him, to prove it and I didn't think he'd come but then there he was. He doesn't come down the chimney by the way, he just walked right in the back door, which was kind of rude actually. But then mom came in and saw him and I thought for sure there was gonna be trouble but she just laughed and they talked and then I went to get the camera so that I could prove to Jason Blackman and then they were kissing, I saw them, I really truly did." Robbie sucked in a much needed breath as Conner and Stella got their laughter under control.

"Robbie, it's not really…." Stella trailed off and turned to Conner. "What you think." She finished lamely.

"What are we gonna tell dad?" Robbie asked.

Conner turned to Stella and shrugged his shoulders, saying something strange. "Warpe harpave tarpo tarpell harpim." When Robbie was born there was a rather significant age difference between them and as way to have some sort of privacy Conner and Stella had made up their own language. It used to annoy Robbie until he'd figured out the secret to their secret language. They just put "arp" after the first letter of every syllable. Of course they didn't know he could understand them so they still used it. What surprised him was that mom and dad hadn't figured it out yet. He quickly translated in his head. _"We have to tell him."_ They had to tell him what?

"_We can't tell him, mom would kill us_." Stella shot back.

"_Better us tell him than him to think mom is having an affair with Santa Claus."_ Conner pointed out.

"I never said affair, I just said they kissed." Robbie said, his eyes opened wide. "You think she's having an affair?"

Stella slapped Conner on the arm and glared at him in a way that said, "See what you did now?" Robbie knew that face, his mom gave his Uncle Bart that face all the time.

"Geez, that freakin hurt." Conner glared at her, rubbing his arm.

"Don't be such a baby." Stella rolled her eyes and tightened her robe.

Conner squatted down until he was eye to eye with Robbie, took a deep breath and put on his serious face. "Look, kiddo." Robbie rolled his eyes, he hated it when Conner called him kiddo. "Mom's not having an affair with Santa Claus…or actually I guess she technically is having an affair with Santa Claus because Dad is Santa Claus."

Robbie looked at him, really looked at him. "Just 'cause I'm a kid doesn't mean I'm stupid." Robbie crossed his arms over his chest uncertain.

"That's true." Stella smiled. "His IQ is technically higher than yours." She reminded Conner. This was actually true, they'd tested him and everything. His mom had said he was in the genius range, Conner had said he was just a genius at annoying people.

"I was sick the day I took that test." Conner glared at his sister.

"You had the sniffles." Stella snorted.

"Look, I'm not lying to you, I'm not trying to trick you, I'm telling you the truth. Dad is Santa Claus." Conner told him.

Robbie stared at him and sighed. "You are telling the truth." He said studying his brother critically. "Cause when you lie you spin the ring on your thumb."

"I do?" Conner asked shocked and looked down at the ring on his thumb.

"Yeah you spun it when you told Dad that you didn't know how the scratch got on his car, and you spun it when you told Mom that you took out the trash last week and you spun it when you told Stella that you didn't read her diary."

"I knew you read it." Stella slapped him in the head this time.

"Stop hitting me." Conner stood up and glared at his sister. "You totally left it out and open on your bed, how was I not suppose to read it?"

"You're such a jerk." Stella sighed.

"So Dad is Santa Claus?" Robbie was mulling this over. This was good on many, many levels. It means that his mom wasn't kissing random guys in the living room, but it also meant that not only was his father a superhero 364 days of the year, for one day he was freaking Santa Claus. "How long has this been going on."

"Pretty much forever." Conner shrugged. "I mean since I was little at least."

"This changes a lot of things." Robbie said nodding sagely. "I'm defiantly going to ask for better presents for a start. You think if I could get him to leave Jason Blackman coal in his stocking next year, I mean it's not as if it would be that big a stretch." Robbie moved off toward his room a smile on his face, mumbling to himself.

"Wait no…" Stella started after Robbie and Conner grabbed her arm.

"Let him go." Conner shook his head.

"He thinks that dad is Santa Claus." Stella pointed out. "As in that he flies around the world delivering toys to all the boys and girls, not as in there isn't really a Santa Claus, Dad's just the one who buys you all the presents."

"I know." Conner sighed. "Just let him have it. He's too smart for his own good sometimes. He figured out about the Green Arrow thing way younger than we did and I think sometimes he's got to be more grown up than he should be so if he wants to believe that Dad's Santa Claus, let him."

Stella smiled, leaned over and kissed Conner on the cheek. "You know, sometimes you can be slightly less of a jerk."

"Yeah well don't tell anyone, I've got a reputation to uphold." Conner rubbed his hair and yawned.

"You also know that you're going to be doing my chores for a month at least for reading my diary or I tell mom that you pay Robbie to take out the trash and that you're the one who scratched Dad's car." Stella smirked.

"I'll do the laundry but not the dishes." Conner bargained.

"Laundry and the dishes." Stella shook her head.

"I'll do the laundry or I tell mom and dad that last week when you said you had to stay late at the Tina's house to work on your history project you were really up at Lookout Cliff with Ryan Miller, letting him get to second base." Conner crossed his arms over his chest.

"Fine." Stella said. "You do the laundry, I'll do the dishes and mom and dad don't have to know anything about anyone."

"Fine." Conner nodded and Stella turned and walked back to her room. "Oh and just so you know, Ryan Miller's getting two black eyes when we go back to school after Winter break."

Stella paused and turned around. "Why two?"

"One for going to second base with my sister and one for breaking up with you because you said you weren't ready to go all the way." Conner shrugged.

"I just wrote that yesterday…you've got to stop reading my diary." Stella said but there was no anger in her voice.

"Come on, if I did that how would I know who to beat up?" Conner pointed out to her.

They heard the sound of the grandfather clock in the front hall ring in the hour, it was midnight. "Merry Christmas Conner." Stella smiled and walked into her room.

"Merry Christmas Stella." Conner said closing his door.

****************

"Do we have like the best kids or what?" Chloe turned to Oliver, they'd heard them talking when they were making their way up to the bedroom and for some reason Chloe had stopped and decided to eavesdrop.

"Who the hell is Ryan Miller?" Oliver asked annoyed. "And can I break his nose?"

"Ollie." Chloe smiled and kissed his cheek. "Let Conner take care of his sister ok?"

"Fine." Oliver huffed annoyed.

"I can't believe he pays Robbie to take out the trash." Chloe shook her head.

"He's washing my car for like…I don't know the rest of his life." Oliver nodded. "Also not getting his license until he's twenty-one."

"He got his license last month." Chloe laughed.

"Well I'm confiscating it until he turns twenty one." Oliver shook his head. "I knew he scratched my car. I'm driving him everywhere." Oliver said. "And I'm going to play my music really loud, and I'll talk to all his friends, you know he hates it when I do that."

"Honey." Chloe stopped in the doorway to their bedroom. "It's Christmas. Can we just enjoy the day and worry about all the horribly embarrassing and possibly emotionally scaring punishments we're going to inflict on our children after the New Year."

"I suppose." Oliver smiled. "It is Christmas after all."

"That's the spirit." Chloe kissed his cheek.

"Can I take the suit off now?" Oliver grabbed the beard and Chloe stopped him with a hand on her wrist.

"Leave it on, just a little while longer?" She asked grabbing the beard and using it to pull him back into the bedroom.

"Merry Christmas to me." Oliver laughed as he shut the door with his foot.

*************

**Author's Note: **Song for this chapter was I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, full lyrics below. I know I got it up a little late but hope you enjoyed anyway and Merry Christmas to you and your family!

I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus  
Underneath the mistletoe last night  
She didn't see me creep  
Down the stairs to have a peep  
She thought that I was tucked up  
In my bedroom, fast asleep

Then I saw Mommy tickle (tickle,tickle,Santa Claus) Santa Claus  
Underneath his beard so snowy white  
Oh, what a laugh it would have been  
If Daddy had only seen  
Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night

He saw Mommy kissing (kissing,kissing) Santa Claus  
I did! I really did see Mommy kissing Santa Claus  
And I'm gonna tell my Dad  
(bell sound)  
Then I saw Mommy tickle (tickle,tickle Santa Claus) Santa Claus  
Underneath his beard so snowy white  
Oh, what a laugh it would have been  
If Daddy had only seen  
Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night

Oh, what a laugh it would have been  
If Daddy had only seen  
Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night


End file.
